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n Cairo 



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AH EASTERN 
NOTE-BOOK 



MARY 3 IN CARPENTER 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM 



"O Angel of the East, one, one gold look 
Across the waters to this twilight nook, — 
The far sad waters, Angel, to this nook." 




A FAYUM MADONNA. 



IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM 



AN EASTERN NOTE-BOOK 



BY 

MARY THORN CARPEN1 

// 

AUTHOR OF "A GIRL'S WINTER IN INDIA" 



SUttfj Illustration* 




M%] Z / 



NEW YORK 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH AND COMPANY 

(incorporated) 
182 Fifth Avenue 



\ 



\Y 



Copyright, 1894, 
By Anson D. F. Randolph and Company, 

INCORPORATED. 



-& 



%* 



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SEmbcrsitg $ress : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



&o a sfoeet Utttle (&ix\, 



THAT THESE PAGES MAY REVEAL TO HER SOMETHING OF THE 

CHARM OF A FAR COUNTRIE WHICH THE MAGICIAN 

TIME WILL DISSOLVE BEFORE HER BABY 

EYES SHALL GROW TO GRASP IT. 



Little Rest, Millbrook, 
New York, 1894. 



CONTENTS. 



A CHRONICLE OF CAIRO. 

PAGE 

The New Hotel. — The Season's Pleasures. — Sylphs or 
Sais. — Cairo at Dinner. — The Old Quarters and the 
New Streets. — In the Mousky. — Egypt's Latest Master, 
Ismail Pasha i 



GIZEH. 

Dividing the Day. — On Donkeys to Gizeh. — The Approach 
to the Museum. — Petrie the Explorer. — An Egyptian 
Lady's " Idlesse." — The Royalties. — Scarabs. — Profits 
in Antiques. — The Court of the Dead. — Pharaoh in 
his Mummy-Case. — The Best Preserved of the 
Mummies 19 



FROM A CAIRO JOURNAL. 

The Bazaars. — Spices from Araby. — The Mosques. — 
Old Tooloon. — A Mohammedan Chapel. — The Hidden 
Jewels of the Shrine. — Its Visitors. — The Veiled 
Worshippers 50 



viii CONTENTS. 

IN THE FAYUM. 

PAGE 

An Oasis in Sahara. — By Goods Train to Medinet-el- 
Fayum. — A Barrack in the Desert. — The Mudir and 
his People. — First Acquaintance with a Native Inn. — 
Amateur Antiquarians. — Crocodilopolis the Ancient. — 
A Fallen Obelisk 62 

A DAY'S EXCURSION TO HAWARA. 

Native Donkey-Boys. — Egypt's Fertile Soil. — On the 
Edge of the Desert. — Lake Moeris. — Joseph's 
Problem. — The Labyrinthine Wonders. — Birket-el- 
Kurun, or the Lake of the Horns. — A Sunset under 
the Libyan Hills. — A Circus in the Fayum. — Saint 
Roube's Orisons 85 

THE CAIRO OF THE MOSLEMS. 

The University of El Azhar. — A New and Original Cam- 
pus. — College Lodgings. — The Wiseacres of Egypt. — 
The Curriculum. — A Hard-Won Purchase. — The 
Muristan. — Mohammed Ali 101 



A SHEIK'S HOUSE. 

Lazarus at the Gate. — A Peacock Room. — The State 
Band-Box.— An Oriental Room. — A Telephone. — The 
Mohammedan Paradise. — "In Shallah " . . . . 115 



CONTENTS. IX 

PAGE 

WITH COOK AT SAKKARA. 

A Sheik of Travellers. — Old Nilus. — The Sail on the 
River. — Fighting for Donkeys. — The Start from 
Sakkara. — Mariette Bey's House. — Luncheon. — The 
Serapeum. — Scampering back to the "Queen Hatasu" 129 



A DAY WITH THE COPTS. 

A Friend from the Mission. — Corner Scenes. — A Coptic 
House. — The Life of the Copts. — Matrimony and 
its Coronation. — The Patriarch of All the Copts. — 
The Visit Returned by Proxy 147 



IN A COPTIC CATHEDRAL. 

A Morning Walk. — Unfamiliar Services. — Aspects of the 
Congregation. — " Suffer the Little Children." — An 
Altar Boy and his Saints. — Two Years ago in the 
Cathedral 163 



JAFFA TO JERUSALEM. 

Good-by to Alexandria. — A Turkish Steamer. — Jaffa. 

The Landing. — A Ticket for Jerusalem. — Investment 
in Shares of the Railway. — Lydda. — "Look! how 
nice! from here is Jerusalem!" 173 



CONTENTS. 



THE NEW JERUSALEM. 

PAGE 

Outside the Walls. — A Dull Town. — The Suburbs. — 
Russian Monks. — Easter Pilgrims. — Monastic Pro- 
perties and Great Religious Houses. — Materials of 
Stone 188 



SOME JEWISH COLONIES. 

The Jews. — The German Colony. — Montefiore Aims- 
Houses. — The Jaffa District. — " Yawash " a Good 
Motto. — Fair Palestine 198 



THE BOX COLONY. 

Last Days in Jerusalem. — Sir Balaam in Palestine. — A 
Cheerless Colony. — The Box Colony. — Upside-down 
Colonization. — Laborers in Abraham's Vineyard. — 
An English College at Goath. — " The King's Wine- 
press." — A Stranger in a Strange Land 209 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

A Fa yum Madonna . . Frontispiece 

On the Nile 49 

Some Fellahin Women 50 

An Egyptian Orchestra 58 

Mosque of Kait Bey 74 

A Bazaar by the Bahr Yusuf 78 

Some Old Houses, Medinet 79 

A Medinet Beauty 87 

A Fellah Boy 88 

A Fellahin Repast 101 

The Citadel 113 

A School near the Mosque T15 

Shepheard's Hotei T29 

A Scribe and a Coptic's Correspondent . . . . 147 

At a Street Corner 149 

Railroad Station at Jerusalem . . , . . . . 185 

A Street in Jerusalem 191 



IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 



A CHRONICLE OF CAIRO. 

TEA and toast were being served on the terrace 
of the New Hotel, when a dusty arabiyeh — 
the victoria of Cairo, drawn by two gaunt horses — 
drew up before the front entrance, and we were 
rushed through rows of small tea-tables and hooded 
chairs, past the bright awnings, which shaded the 
John Bull section of men and maidens, in riding 
costume, who were easily distinguishable, even at 
half a glance, from the French and Russians flower- 
ing forth in colors like a rose-garden. The occu- 
pants of the draped and much-bedecked piazza 
seemed fain to keep clear of us and our dust; the 
tourist who arrives tired and travel-stained from 
Isma'i'lia generally preferring rather to see than to be 
seen. On this occasion only, he merely sniffs the 
refreshing tea-fumes, and is rapidly conducted to- 
wards the office, where he is glad to follow his 
boxes to any number left unoccupied in the crowded 



2 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

hotel. "It is the season," explains the manager, 
as he hands the servant a key which fits a door 
on the third floor, promising at the same time to 
move you down at the first vacancy, — ■ a promise 
which would be unnecessary, if there was only a 
lift to get you up. Two high bedsteads shrouded 
in white mosquito netting make an unfavorable first 
impression of your apartment. This impression was 
dissipated, however, by an Arab boy, who appeared 
at our door after several attempts to follow out the 
directions posted on the side wall, to " press the elec- 
tric button" to summon the maid. Each effort re- 
sulted in bringing the dusky servant, who was as 
many times dismissed, until finally I commanded him 
to bring the chambermaid, to which he meekly re- 
plied, "Madam, I am she," and produced a queer old 
amphora of fresh water which might have belonged 
to Pharaoh's daughter; and if we took the plagues 
of Egypt along with its other antiquities, no one 
could object to that. 

The New Hotel, an unsentimental-looking pile, 
stands out with its Moorish pretensions opposite a 
well-shaded garden in the Place Ezbekiyeh. The 
greenery all about the terrace shows foliage which 
shadows the grass and keeps it beautifully green. 
From this wide veranda, carpeted with gay Turk- 
ish rugs, are hung red and blue draperies of white 
canvas, with designs of stars and crescents sewed 



A CHRONICLE OF CAIRO. 3 

on them by the artisans of the Tunis bazaar to suit 
the taste of the Oriental customer. 

The world of Cairo not only, but the entire East, 
passes by the New Hotel in a never-ending pano- 
ramic procession. At the entrance, dragomen of 
all nationalities, with all colors of Eastern turbans, 
and all alike in brightly-braided jackets, offer their 
services to the new-comers in clamorous phrases 
of self-praise, or, when invention fails in this line, 
chatter and laugh among themselves like so many 
magpies. I am at my wit's end sometimes in a 
vain mental search for a country which will fit their 
curious clothes and unfamiliar contours. Greeks, 
Copts, Abyssinians with soft gazelle eyes, Nubians 
and Algerians dressed in short or long garments 
with bare or draped arms, propose their services as 
guides, dragomen, or conductors to the Cairene 
sights. A cavass of one of the different consulates, 
richly dressed in silver and gold embroidered stuffs, 
with flashing cimeter at his side, flourishes a long 
cane with a golden point, which he uses effectually 
while proudly pushing aside the throng of foot pas- 
sengers who are constantly moving past the entrance 
to the hotel, where the servant awaits his master. 
In the throng a European dress is sometimes seen, 
but is drowned in the overflow of brilliantly draped 
Orientals of all races. Merchants, with ostrich 
plumes and antiquities more or less authentic, — 



4 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

native bottles, and scarabs or rugs and spears from 
the Soudan, — saunter through this busiest of thor- 
oughfares. Women enveloped in a long drapery, the 
face hidden under a veil, and only showing their 
feet, shod in satin slippers of a striking color, force 
their way past an Arab trotting along on his meek- 
looking donkey with the utmost carelessness, as 
calm as glass in contrast to the conscious embar- 
rassment of a European, who, in the same position, 
always looks as if he were doing something ridic- 
ulous. Then the freshly imported closed broughams 
of the harem dash by, dividing the shining sea of 
color, which rolls back as the sa'fs gracefully clear 
the way, running swiftly a few yards in advance 
of the superb horses. 

Xhe sai's are the most sylph-like beings imagin- 
able; scarcely touching the ground, they can run 
for hours without tiring, — nothing fatigues them; 
their costume is delicious, a little theatrical per- 
haps, but not too strange or bright under the burn- 
ing Eastern sunshine. A vest richly decorated and 
embroidered in gold arabesques, a wide silk sash 
with ends floating far in the wind, and a pair of 
loose, gauzy sleeves immaculately white, falling to 
the waist, meet a short skirt of the same material, 
and make a costume so delicate and light, and with 
so little friction in it, that it is no more an impedi- 
ment to rapid motion than a soft white cloud 



A CHRONICLE OF CAIRO. 5 

would be if it could be utilized for like purposes on 
terra jirma. It is to the Mamelukes that Cairo 
owes the sai's. Each of these cavaliers was accom- 
panied by a runner, who carried his weapons, 
adroitly recovering them, should they fall during 
a combat, gliding in and out of the fray, doing all 
the mischief possible to the enemy by cutting their 
saddle-bands and exasperating the horses with well- 
delivered and demoralizing sword-cuts. But the 
race is dying out; the sai's is passe at thirty, and 
at forty has weakness of the lungs, to which he 
generally succumbs. In Egypt, nature demands that 
men should be lotus-eaters, not sylphs of perpetual 
motion. 

One of the first things that attracted our atten- 
tion among the sights of the Place Ezbeklyeh was 
a string of blue-robed women marching bare-footed 
in couples, preceded by a company of Arabs with 
woful countenances, who sang a funeral dirge in a 
nasal, monotonous chant, the measure and rhythm 
of which changed every now and again, as the ear- 
nestness deepened. The men were Muezzins, or 
hired mourners, who are paid by the hour to recite 
the Koran on such occasions, and we soon per- 
ceived that it was a funeral procession. The 
corpse, wrapped in a coarse cashmere shawl, was 
laid on a bier head foremost, a board wrapped in 
silks at each end, on which was pinned the golden 



6 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

jewelry worn by the poor woman, who had died that 
morning. The company also included women hired 
to howl, and beat their breasts at the Mohammedan 
Cemetery under the Mokattam hills, about a mile 
from the city, where the sandy soil is catacombed 
with graves in every direction, and there the dead 
are laid to rest with their faces turned towards 
Mecca. Here the wailing and lamenting is renewed 
every Thursday and Friday following, until forty 
days have elapsed, and then a large stone is rolled 
on the new grave to accommodate the angel who 
will surely come to instruct the faithful on the 
answers they are to give on the Catechismal Day 
of Judgment. 

At the mystic hour of sunset, a little Arabian 
fairy darts out apparently from the feathery tufts 
which fringe and tangle the shady paths of the 
Ezbekiyeh garden. This little woodland elf, scarcely 
less graceful than the pliant shrubbery and the 
lovely, bright, flying things, is like nothing else in 
Cairo. Clinging like a delicate tendril to the iron 
rail about the terrace, where the tourists are taking 
their tea, she glances wistfully from one to another; 
then her pretty pink draperies and long black braids 
catch some one's eyes, and she begins a low, coo- 
ing chant, "Tirili, Tirili, Tirili," — a weird warble 
which she produces from her vocal chords by merely 
pressing her finger-tips on the throat, as if playing a 



A CHRONICLE OF CAIRO. 7 

stringed lute. Presently she falls into a phantom 
dance, executed with wild pirouettes, always in 
time to the elfish music. 

At half after seven all Cairo dines, and the 
hungry tourist turns gratefully to the flesh-pots 
of Egypt, when they are served at a well ap- 
pointed table (T hotc, quite in keeping with semi- 
Europeanized Cairo. The dinner is very beauti- 
ful, brightened with the evening dresses of scores 
of Continental belles seated at two long tables, 
conversing gayly with the English officers from 
the Citadel, or striving to put at ease a native 
Egyptian wearing an orthodox scarlet fez, who is 
apparently listening with deep attention to his fair 
companion while mentally deciding whether to use 
his fingers or his fork to the champignons a la crime 
handed him by the waiter. The oddest part of 
the scene is the sprinkling of red head-gear up 
and down the dining-room, which belongs to every 
shade of Eastern complexion, — Copts, Turks, and 
even Jews, the latter having returned in large 
numbers to the land of Goshen, this time for the 
" season" only, when they dwell in beautiful villas 
and possess hotels and valuable corner lots in their 
ancient House of Bondage. 

Baedeker solves the sight-seeing problem for 
every new tourist who confides his stay in Cairo to 
the guidance and rules contained in his little red 



8 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

book. By carefully following out the prescribed 
disposition of twelve working hours, the prin- 
cipal attractions of Cairo may be seen in six days, 
according to the guide-book. Having never tried 
this method of doing Cairo, I cannot dispute the 
fact, but can only say that indefatigable perse- 
verance during two visits of several weeks' dura- 
tion has failed to make an impression on the 
bazaars alone; and without going outside of the 
Place Ezbekiyeh, a month's study would hardly 
suffice to comprehend its endless street-scenes, 
which have been described a thousand times, but 
defy description. 

The most important street in Cairo is undoubt- 
edly the Mousky, belonging to the old French 
quarter; narrow, and bordered with tall houses, 
with all sorts of balconies suspended in seeming 
insecurity from their shaky surroundings. The 
guides call it the Cairene "Rue de Rivoli. " 
Doubtless that famous avenue had once upon a 
time just as humble a beginning; but when I first 
saw the narrow, dingy Mousky, it was indeed diffi- 
cult to believe it. Up and down the street are 
open booths, jutting out a little over the pave- 
ment, all the more to allure the shoppers and 
literally make them walk over the merchandise 
spread out under their feet, and above their heads. 
A calm almost religious presides over the little 



A CHRONICLE OF CAIRO. 9 

shopkeepers' transactions. The importunate de- 
mands of the Parisian merchants to buy, the em- 
barrassing discussion regarding the merits of the 
bargain counter in our modern shops, is entirely 
absent, and silence reigns over the beautiful Eastern 
fabrics and embroideries of the Mousky; although 
if ever merchants should stand excused for vaunt- 
ing their goods, it is these old Persians. Even 
the old system of bargaining is succeeded by a 
placard at the entrance of every important shop, 
announcing "Prix fixe," — an innovation which is 
rather strictly carried out in practice, but entirely 
circumvented in principle by the substantial back- 
sheesh given by the merchant to an initiated 
customer. 

At an afternoon tea a well-known member of the 
French nobility, wintering in Cairo, showed us an 
exquisite unset turquoise embedded in red wax on 
a piece of bamboo, in order to display its beauty 
quite unadorned. To my amazement the noble 
dame, with her distinguished air and manners, con- 
fessed, without a trace of humiliation, that she had 
received the stone that morning as backsheesh from 
the hands of a popular Persian jeweller in the Place 
Ezbekiyeh, and I better understood* that Nature's 
touch which makes us all akin is the golden one. 
What is the difference between a piastre and a pre- 
cious stone, although one satisfies a duchess and the 



IO IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

other a donkey boy; it is all equal except in the 
mind of man. 

The Mousky is very unlike the native parts of 
the city, — still it is not Eastern, nor yet modern : 
tall houses with overhanging cornices jutting far 
out over the street shade the narrow avenue ; civiliza- 
tion has penetrated these semi-Europeanized shops 
in some slight degree, and one finds that waxen 
figures clad in Saxon clothes from Regent Street 
have superseded the Oriental draperies in the shop 
windows, and these flaxen-haired gentlemen are 
gazed at as curiously by the Oriental throng as a 
full-fledged Madame Tussaud's wax-work exhibition 
would be in London, could the positions be reversed; 
but, luckily, the Levantines alter the cut of their 
coats, as well as the methods of their speech, very 
gradually. Sewing-machines and pianos are found 
in the Mousky, but rarely Korans and turbans, 
which makes one regret and applaud twenty times 
within the hour. 

The magnificent white donkeys with saddles of red 
morocco or yellow velvet, and bridles tinkling with 
rows of silver chains reaching nearly to the ground, 
are, however, as barbarous as one could desire; 
and so are the long low trucks drawn by oxen, 
bringing goods from the caravansaries or Khans 
to the shops, where it is an overpowering tempta- 
tion to linger among the fascinating silver stuffs, 



A CHRONICLE OF CAIRO. II 

gold embroideries, and webby gauzes; but the desire 
to push on to more wonderful sights is even more 
tempting. 

From our saddle perch we pass in review all the 
brilliant tissues of silver thread and silken stripes, 
which are the turbans of the dragoman, and gallop 
through the confusion of men, women, and children, 
blind beggars, camels, and humble asses with shabby 
harness mended with bits of string. "Yallah, 
Yallah ! " calls the donkey boy, encouraging his 
beast at the same time with blows from a small 
stick. The patient animal has slackened his speed, 
and a carriage drawn by two superb horses is 
impeded in its rapid progress by a string of camels, 
who can literally be described as "stopping the 
way." "Yallah, go on!" calls the little Arab, 
louder and more determined than before; and by 
a miracle we circle both obstacles, and in a moment 
more arrive at the end of the Mousky, so dazzled 
by all that has passed that we dismount and take 
breath. The faith and confidence of the donkey 
boy in his Prophet alone has prevented our being 
crushed and crumbled into fragments in the seeth- 
ing caldron of Eastern humanity. 

New Cairo has been created out of the debris of 
the old city; all about the ancient quarter are the 
tumbling remains of palaces, mosques, and once 
great and sumptuous houses. The modern Cairenes 



12 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

rarely repair or rebuild their beautiful monuments, 
which were never remarkable for solidity, and 
were frequently erected in haste with the material 
nearest at hand ; for it seems far better to the 
Eastern mind to abandon the most exquisite ruin, 
and utilize the ornaments or stone-work in the con- 
struction of a new building. Even then, provided 
the chiselled bronzes and brilliant arabesques are 
beautiful to look upon, the Oriental cares little if 
the fragile construction sways with the wind, or 
crumbles in the atmospheric dampness of the rainy 
season. The need of change is born in the Arabian 
nature. The roving disposition which these nomads 
inherited from their ancestors makes of their city 
life a mere exchange from the tents in the desert; 
and if they cannot change their encampment, as in 
the olden times, they can at least fold up their 
tents figuratively, and build a new house. The 
last Master of Egypt, Ismail Pasha, was a great 
architect, possessing the fever of construction to 
such a degree that we owe to his building mania 
the bounteous luxuriance of thirty palaces with 
magnificent gardens, each having a separate shady 
beauty of its own; besides hundreds of barracks 
hardly distinguishable from the palaces, as well as 
schools, mosques, and hospitals, all as costly as 
they are ugly and vulgar. The expense and diffi- 
culty of transportation forced Ismail to depend on 



A CHRONICLE OF CAIRO. 13 

what his immediate vicinity produced in the way 
of material for constructing these new monuments 
to his glorious reign. At every turn the ancient 
mosques, as well as the public and private buildings, 
furnished for his palaces exquisitely chiselled 
stone-work, mushrebiyehs, windows carved like 
spider-webs in cedar, fountains of rose marble, 
colonnades of granite .and balconies of sculptured 
work, making up in some degree for the short- 
comings of the Parisian furniture of the most gaudy 
and detestable description, which was palmed off 
on the unsuspecting Khedive for several millions 
of francs, to decorate the interior of his royal 
harems. 

The Rue de Rivoli is the Place de la Concorde 
of Cairo ; that is to say, it is the spot most per- 
meated with life and color. It has undergone 
many changes. Once a beautiful lake surrounded by 
shady walks, the wonder of the Oriental world, it 
is now a simple garden planted with tropical 
growth, and filled with rare plants and bright-plu- 
maged birds, surrounding an open square and the 
European Theatre. As soon as four o'clock strikes, 
the gay world of Cairo promenades in the garden, 
enjoying the music of the Citadel military band 
and the coolness of the evening, and then goes forth 
in open victorias driven by dark-skinned and red- 
turbaned coachmen, who guide their high-spirited 



14 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

horses along the acacia-bordered avenue towards the 
Ghesireh Palace or the beautiful road to Shubra. 

At nine o'clock in the evening, an Italian opera 
just across the park allures all tourist Cairo during 
the season, if the seductive charm of the "moon- 
beam's smile" that Browning talks about, and the 
delicious reflection of it on mosques and fairy- 
balconies, with the scents from a hundred garden 
flowers, and the mysterious, ever-changing Eastern 
night scenes do not make the real drama and 
living scenery viewed from the open terrace more 
enchanting than the airs from "Ai'da " or "Madame 
Angot." 

The European quarter is a town built during our 
generation of pleasure-seekers and officials, "whose 
spirit is always visible in their masonry." Not 
displeasing, however, are the pretty attempts at 
Arabic architectural imitations of several new 
Oriental houses, some of them containing valuable 
curios and collections of Egyptian antiquities. 
An artistic Frenchman has built a veritable chef 
cPceuvre of an Arabian house, but the greater part 
of the buildings are Italian, with endless flat walls 
and sky-blue shutters, surrounded by gardens ex- 
tending along well-kept boulevards, which are 
lighted with gas. Here and there an immense 
hotel blooms out in its pink stucco brilliancy from 
the tall surroundings of feathery palms and the heavy 



A CHRONICLE OF CAIRO. 15 

foliage of the Mimosa Nilotica trees. The Hotel 
Continental close by the official residence of Lord 
Cromer is a Mecca for our English cousins; the 
splendid ball-room is lined with large mirrors, 
where each one of them can look upon himself with 
pleasure; and two evenings in every week these 
mirrors reflect the British nobility in very taste- 
less ball-gowns, which do not shock us so much 
when we consider how many unenlightened notions, 
of more important bearing on modern customs, 
are always visible in the outward appearance of 
these worn-out institutions of caste. The modern 
knights-errant are not exactly mail-clad, as of old, 
but the heavy braided and gilded military dress and 
side arms aid the resemblance of these gather- 
ings to the last-century pictures in the National 
Gallery. 

Shubra is the modern palace of the Khedive, 
but has nothing distinctly artistic to recommend it ; 
nor is it splendid enough to resemble a royal resi- 
dence in any detail. A plain, prosaic structure, 
utterly devoid of design or pretension to architec- 
ture, it belongs to what some one has called "stone 
waste paper." It is the residence of the queen 
mother, — 'the Khedevine, as she is called, — and 
also of Abbas II. 

The beautiful road to Shubra was long ago a 
lovely avenue shaded with leafy trees and bordered 



16 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

with orange gardens; perhaps nothing in the world 
was to be compared to it until the mighty syca- 
mores, not yet forty years old, and which live in 
this climate three centuries, were shorn of their 
beautiful feathery branches for firewood. Now 
the tangled hedges, allowed to grow in rank 
luxuriance, intercept your way to the palm thick- 
ets, and hide from sight the orange and lemon 
groves; but the sugar-cane fields are still there, 
the sunset tints the tamarinds as far as the 
yellow desert, and long strings of camels undulate 
in single file over the boundless sand, merging in 
the distant perspective like an elongated kite's 
tail fallen out of the sky. The carriages of popular 
Pashas and rich Effendis crowd the Shubra 
Avenue on Mohammedan fete-days. A great deal 
of imagination is necessary to discover the beauty 
of these waxen inmates, whose dark eyes are accen- 
tuated with kohol; and the full moon face, which is 
the ideal of a Turkish Venus, is mercifully veiled 
in white gauze, which refines the picture, framed 
by an English brougham. 

In the Cairo Directory, the date of the birth of 
the present Khedive is given as occurring i Gamad 
Akher, 1291, — rather a startling announcement to 
an eye accustomed to the Gregorian calendar. In the 
same Directory are given the names and dates of 
the "famille Khedeviale." 



A CHRONICLE OF CAIRO. 17 

Son Altesse, Abbas II., Khedive d'Egypte, elevement au 
Trone 8 Gamad, 1309. January 8th, 1892. 

S. A. la Princesse Emma Hanem, mere de son Altesse le 
Khedive. 

S. A. le Prince Mehemet Ali frere de son Altesse le 
Khedive. 

S. A. la Princesse Hadgi Nanem. 

The grandson of Mehemet Ali, who founded 
modern Egypt, and created its institutions, laws, 
customs, and government, is as much a democrat 
to all outward appearances as a radical German. A 
slightly built young man just turned twenty-one 
years, he looks much too young to assume the duties 
and responsibilities of governing. This new- 
fashioned Pharaoh knows little and cares less for 
the imposing and elaborate machinery of court 
ceremonial and millinery. Every morning at ten 
o'clock he drives to the Abbidin Palace in a plain 
victoria drawn by two black horses ; he is dressed 
like any English gentleman, with the single excep- 
tion of an orthodox red turban, which he constantly 
lifts to acknowledge the greetings of the people; 
without pomp or ceremony he returns from business 
at five o'clock, having spent the day at his desk in 
the modest, but comfortable offices of the palace. 

Abbas II. is an enigma to all Cairo; he has not 
received or entertained what is called society since 
he ascended the throne, but has well amused him- 



1 8 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

self by instituting changes and upsetting the 
politics and established order of things, and has 
yet to learn the lesson that " le roi regne, mais il 
ne gouverne pas." The ministry have not even 
succeeded in their traditional right of choosing a 
bride ; and the young man having taken unto him- 
self a political family, he may end in following out 
the same privilege in his heart affairs, and select 
his own wife. 

Friday at twelve a modest escort of four native 
cavalrymen precede the Khedive's carriage e7i 
route to his favorite mosque, or perhaps to the 
citadel of Mehemet Ali, where Lord Cromer's 
" Black Watch " lean, far out over the barrack bal- 
conies idling away the uneventful hours in the 
same fancied security as the Mamelukes who were 
exterminated on this very spot by a Turkish despot 
with a cruel and cunning revenge, which suddenly 
made a barbarian of the ancestor of this young sov- 
ereign, who is not more seemingly in love with 
British occupation than was his predecessor with 
his Circassian Mamelukes. 



GIZEH. 

THE weather in Cairo is always fine during the 
season, which eliminates one very popular 
topic of conversation among the winter guests. 
Rain and fog are never considered as hindrances 
to any proposed fete champetre, for the sun shines 
on perpetually with singular softness, the rays 
apparently passing through a screen of delicate tis- 
sues, which tempers its heat and absorbs its light. 
No one has a moment to waste ; and the slowness of 
the table d'hote breakfast is a great annoyance, 
especially as the Cairene conception of a cuisine 
leaves much to be desired. We are never less than 
an hour and a half at this occupation, which, how- 
ever, does not interfere with the discussion of 
various plans for the afternoon. What are you 
going to see to-day? is the question passed from 
one to another down the long dining-room, and the 
interminable intervals between the courses are 
bridged over by an entente cordiale prevailing 
among the representatives of all countries on this 
absorbing subject of sight-seeing. The new-comers 
have invariably planned out a day according to 



20 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

Baedeker, consisting in a summing up of seventy 
Cairene sights, and dividing them by six hard 
working days of eight hours each, — including 
mosques, pyramids, bazaars, and Heliopolis, the 
tombs of the Khedives, and the Virgin's Tree, in 
bewildering confusion. 

The usual way to do the Museum is to take it, 
in tourist's terms, on the way to the pyramids; and 
a shudder went through me at this irreverent man- 
ner of rushing past the dead Pharaohs, the repose of 
their restful sleep contrasting serenely with the 
pushing crowd of scurrying tourists. We scorned 
the accepted method, and reserved our admiration 
exclusively for the venerable dust of Egyptian 
dynasties at Gizeh. Outside, on the pavement, a 
horde of Turks had long lain "dreaming of the 
hour" which would bring piastres for donkey hire. 
Aroused by our appearance at the hotel entrance, 
the blue burnooses and turbaned heads imme- 
diately blended into fantastic groups of Arabic 
design, — an animated pyramid of bright-faced and 
delicate-featured bronzes, each offering his patient 
beast for the excursion, or clamoring to be em- 
ployed as driver of a team of discouraged-looking 
horses on the opposite side of the street, for which 
the usual price was demanded, plus an amount of 
piastres added or diminished from the official car- 
riage rates printed inside the vehicle, according to 



GIZEH. 21 

the idea formed of your liberality or indifference. 
The porter always appears as a deliverer at this 
moment, and declares the carriage fare for Lei 
Antikat (the Museum of Antiquities) to be twelve 
piastres to go and return, eight piastres an hour 
while you wait. "Tarrifa," murmurs the dispers- 
ing crowd, who have nothing more to say, and a 
carriage awaits your pleasure. 

The Museum of Gizeh is reached by the new iron 
bridge over the Nile. The road is well kept, and 
is shaded by beautiful lebbek-trees, and the tall 
grasses of the sugar-cane are all shooting and 
waving in the breeze, which lightly stirs the heavy 
clover, bends the yellow mustard flowers, and then 
ripples the gray water along the river-side, where 
the white herons are snapping their prey, half- 
hidden by the bulrushes. 

We had started in company with an involuntary 
escort of donkeys ridden by barefoot Arabs, which 
soon disappeared amid the temptations of the sugar- 
cane bazaar. Occasionally a Turkish soldier going 
to the races passed, dressed in an embroidered red 
and gold costume marvellously combined with silks 
and silver, producing a harmonious effect at once 
beautiful and splendidly savage. A sais in loose 
fluttering white trousers, a bright gold jacket with 
puffed crepe sleeves, a tight turban with black silk 
tassel streaming to the waist, scarcely touching his 



22 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

bare feet to the earth, he throws back his shoulders, 
and with a slender pole erect in his hand, clears 
the way for his master's high-stepping horse and 
English dog-cart, impeded by a string of the dis- 
carded camels, once the thoroughbreds of Egypt, 
but who now carry the fellahin with the same 
grace as they did the Pharaohs. 

After a short half-hour, I learned we were passing 
Roda, the island of the episode of Moses in the 
bulrushes; and soon, through a garden of tall 
shrubs and grand old trees, is seen the third and 
last " eternal dwelling-place" of the Pharaohs. In 
their vain imaginings, the artists of the Rameseum 
at Thebes, upon whose portals were carved the 
adder guardians of the door of heaven, inscribed a 
legend that these pictured tombs should be the last 
and final resting-place of the kings. There seems 
a probability now that in the course of time their 
mortal remains will be set down as many times as 
Queen Eleanor's coffin, in face of the fact that they 
have suffered re-entombment twice in five years, — 
first at Boulak, and then at Gizeh, and in a stucco 
building, a material they would have scoffed at 
during their age of stone. 

A few years ago, the Museum of Egyptian 
Antiquities at Boulak was transferred to the vice- 
regal palace at Gizeh on the banks of the Nile, and 
this modern building gleams out of a luxurious 



GIZEH. 23 

garden, — a fit setting for the treasures and relics 
of the kings and princes, whose imperial ideas of 
beauty are far surpassed by the magnificence of the 
tree ferns and flowers of the rarely ornamented 
garden grounds. 

There is little to relate that is not contained in 
the hand-book sold at the entrance for two piastres. 
I soon lost myself in the restfulness and silence of 
the quiet halls, where the dumb and stony inmates 
speak a sign language understood by savants, but 
only comprehended in a sort of intuitive way by 
a woman's fancy. 

The first of the great apartments on the entrance 
floor of the museum is the "Salle de l'Ancien 
Empire," which is said to contain the largest exist- 
ing collection of monuments of the primeval empire. 
We are in the presence of the builders of the pyra- 
mids of Medum. A notice, pasted at the foot of 
a glass case, declares the occupant sitting there in 
stony indifference, one hand resting on each smooth 
and rounded knee, to be Prince Rahotep, and the 
delicate-featured woman by his side is the royal 
princess Nefert "the beautiful," the wife of 
Rahotep, son of Senferu, "the commander of the 
king's warriors, chief of the temple city of Heli- 
opolis, the town of the god Ra. " Of fair and faintly 
tinted skin, clad in fine white linen garments, and 
wearing a slender circlet of ribbon about her head; 



24 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

her short frizzled hair arranged in a wig (a fairly 
good one for ancient Egypt); the delicate white 
feet bare, with imperceptible ankles. Before you 
is a perfect picture of an ancient Egyptian beauty. 
The marvellous liquid eyes, made of quartz upon a 
background of silver, haunt you, and are the amaze- 
ment of all who look upon the oldest statue in the 
world. 

The pyramids of Gizeh had not been built when 
these statues were hewn out of stone to adorn the 
tomb-chambers near the Medum Pyramids on the 
Nile. 

It was the tender, careful hands of Mariette Bey, 
the great French savant, who first excavated the 
necropolis tomb-chambers, mastabas, and pyramids 
of King Senferu, which contained the most inter- 
esting monuments in existence of the handicraft of 
the third and fourth dynasty. Senferu, the foun- 
der of the fourth dynasty, and the first king of 
whom we possess any contemporaneous monuments, 
was the builder of the shining pyramid which he 
called the "Pyramid of the Rising," whose terraces 
of yellow stone form a gleaming mountain of 
masonry on the border of the brown desert fifty 
miles south of Cairo. Of this old-world king it 
was written in ancient papyrus, "Then was raised 
up the holiness of King Senferu as a good king 
over the whole country," and he, rejoicing during 



GIZEH. 25 

his life in the title of "The Maker of Good " and 
" the Lord of Truth, " was determined to eclipse " the 
tombs of all who went before or after, and keep his 
body safe, his name secure through all ages." 

A modern traveller describes a visit to Flinders 
Petrie, who finished the work of excavation begun 
by Mariette Bey; the account is full of interesting 
details of the dangers and difficulties of uncovering 
the mastabas pits of the family of Senferu at the 
Medum Pyramid. He relates that if one wished to 
see Flinders Petrie at work under the shadow of the 
pyramid, he would be found in a tiny tent, an old 
packing-box serving alike as table and chair; a box 
of biscuits, some potted-meat cans, and a paraffine 
stove making up the dining and drawing room 
furniture of the brave explorer's rough reed hut, 
close to the old monuments which are yielding up 
their secrets to him; and should you enter the little 
tomb adjoining, where once, with much lamentation 
and many cakes of offering, those entered who 
mourned for Nefer Mat, you will see a rude camp 
bedstead. There, at the end of long days of digging, 
sleeps the explorer, and " the stars can look in upon 
him and the first sun visit him." 

During the excavation, the most friendly rela- 
tions existed between the fellah laborers and the 
" Khanaja Engleese," the English gentleman. They 
all loved him ; and the master and the men seemed 



26 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

bound by a tie too uncommon among the Thebes 
and Karnak authorities, who use the kourbash so 
severely on the naked ankles of men, women, and 
children, lashing them with elephant-hide whips 
when the poor creatures falter under the weight of 
their heavy palm baskets of mould, and half faint 
under the strain of hard work for ten hours a day 
with the summer sun at over a hundred degrees. 
Among the remarkable discoveries of Mr. Petrie, 
not the least interesting were the mastaba graves, 
showing two apparently different modes of burial 
at the same age and side by side. In his interest- 
ing book, "Ten Years Digging in Egypt," Mr. 
Petrie writes, — 

" Another glimpse of the prehistoric age of Egypt is 
afforded by the burials at Medum. The later people always 
buried at full length, and with some provision for the body, 
such as food, head-rests, etc. Such burials are found among 
the nobles at Medum ; but most of the people there were 
buried in a contracted form, nose and knees, or at least 
with the thigh bent square with the body and heels drawn 
up. And, moreover, no food, vessels, or other objects are 
put in. Yet there was no more difference shown ; the 
bodies are in deep well tombs, often placed in large wooden 
boxes, which must have been valuable in Egypt, and always 
lying with the head to the north, facing the East. Here is 
clearly a total difference in beliefs, and probably in race. 
We know that two races, the aquiline-nosed and the snouty, 
can be distinguished in early times ; and it seems that the 



GIZEH. 2 J 

aborigines used the contracted burial, and the dynastic race 
the extended burial, which, with its customs, soon became 
the national mode. 

" Is it likely that the bulk of the people should have 
resisted this change for some eight hundred years, and then 
have suddenly adopted it in two or three generations? 
Does not this rapid adoption of the upper-class custom, 
between the beginning of the fourth dynasty and the 
immediately succeeding times suggest that the dynastic 
race did not enter Egypt until shortly before we find their 
monuments ? At least, the notion that the stages preced- 
ing the known monuments should be sought outside of 
Egypt, and that this is the explanation of the dearth of 
objects before the fourth dynasty, is strengthened by the 
change of custom and belief we then find." 

The descendants of King Senferu, the Lady 
Atot and Nefer Mat. and also Rahotep, and the 
Princess Nefert of Gizeh fame, were possessed with 
a mania for mastabas; and the wonderful beauty of 
the cutting and enamelling of their stone sculptures 
lends a strange interest to the tombs, and from 
these sanctuary pictures it comes to pass that every 
minutiae of their lives is known to us as perfectly 
as if five thousand suns had not tried in vain to 
throw an eternal shade on them. The drawings 
show us Nefer Mat was a great farmer, besides, and 
that each of the tenants of his vast estate had sent 
a servant with offerings to his tomb; that he was 
also a mighty hunter, for the hunting hawks sculp- 



28 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

tured above the door of the tomb-chamber have 
"perched and sat, and nothing more," for thirty-five 
hundred centuries. 

The Lady Atot was also a lover of sport, perhaps 
sharpened by the " idlesse" of an Egyptian lady's 
monotonous existence, for the Gizeh Museum stone 
pictures show how she diversified her lotus-eating 
days. On a facade taken from her tomb, men are 
represented as engaged in snaring wild fowl with a 
large net, while three Egyptians bring the game 
they have captured to the princess with great cere- 
mony, and the inscription relates that "the Lady 
Atot receives with pleasure the game caught alive 
by the chief noble, Nefer Mat." 

Hardly less interesting as illustrating the domes- 
tic side of this Egyptian lady's accomplishments is 
the exquisite fresco of geese in the same treasure- 
room of Gizeh Museum ; the six fowls are drawn 
and colored with the greatest skill and accuracy, 
each feather finished as carefully as a perfect minia- 
ture painting on a material of hardened clay coated 
with plaster of Paris. And so in the early dawn of 
history we find that a love of field sports was not 
inconsistent with a taste for homely farm-yard duties, 
in spite of all legends to the contrary. In fact, 
with princes as farmers and noble ladies tending 
fowls, the old couplet comes to mind, — 

" When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who was then the gentleman ? " 



GIZEH. 29 

But it is the happy family life of Nefer Mat's 
time which charms us most; we see the brave 
Egyptian going forth to war in his gilded and 
enamelled chariot ; a picture follows where he is 
portrayed slaying his foes, and then, returning home 
laden with trophies, to be welcomed and greeted by 
his affectionate family. At dinner they are all 
enjoying the good things prepared for them, the 
sons and daughters entertaining the guests, while 
musicians are playing on various instruments, harps, 
lutes, guitars, cymbals, and flutes in the most 
methodical, common-place manner. In this ad- 
mirable domesticity of the fourth dynasty, and 
the thirtieth degree of latitude, a father called 
his daughter "sweetheart," and the girl phrases 
her reply in affectionate language to the "Best 
Beloved." 

And this was in the reign of Rahotep, the king, 
in the very beginning of things. 

The "Salle de l'Ancien Empire" is followed by 
an endless stretch of stone chambers, whose walls 
are lined with cabinets containing an army of 
figures of Egyptian priests, royal scribes, sacred 
serpents and sceptres in limestone, bronze, and 
gray granite. An inscription describes a small 
figure "as the steward of the grain for tribute, 
Nefer;" but for other reasons than respect for his 
stewardship is the granite valued and preserved by 



30 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

the antiquarian of the nineteenth century. It hap- 
pens that the artist who immortalized Nefer is him- 
self forgotten, but his work remains as one of the 
finest existing specimens of Egyptian sculpture. It 
is indeed a wonderful thing to be carried back to the 
first ages of the world, but still more puzzling to 
find a race who, having reached a most enviable 
position in all the arts, have even mastered the 
mysteries of the sciences which we, the heirs of all 
the ages, are still vainly struggling with. 

In the " Salle Funeraire " are the cases of scarabs 
found in the bodies of mummies where the heart 
has been removed. Scarabs in glass, and in corne- 
lian and perforated wood and enamel, some jewelled 
and some true beetles, are now seen in the open 
daylight after their long and grewsome entombment. 
The enlightened sentiments and subtle foresight of 
these old philosophers speak out to us from these 
symbols of a future life, which prove, without a 
doubt, that they believed in a resurrection from the 
dead. C. F. Gordon-Cummings says that, — 

" The lesson was learned from the little beetle mother who 
lays her eggs on the damp earth of the Nile banks, and then, 
depositing layers of clay above them and cutting away the 
earth beneath, till she has fashioned a round clay ball in 
the heart of which her eggs are safely imbedded, slowly 
and patiently moves backwards, rolling this precious ball to 
the edge of the desert, where, in the warm, dry sand, she 



GIZEH. 3 1 

excavates a long gallery, wherein, as in a catacomb, she 
buries herself, carrying with her the clay ball, wherein so 
many germs of life lie hidden and protected. Thence, in 
due time, a multitude of tiny living creatures come forth to 
crawl through their little span of existence, thereafter to fall 
asleep in mummy-like chrysalis, and await the wondrous 
day when they shall come forth from thence, in a new and 
perfect form, no longer hideous worms, grubbing under- 
ground or crawling miserably in the desert, but beautiful 
beetles, clad in armor of emerald and gold, and endowed 
with delicate wings and power of swift movement on earth 
or in air. 

" What marvel that these old philosophers beheld, in all 
this subtle foresight, a trace of divine wisdom ? — that they 
should adopt the beetle, with its earth globe filled with the 
seed of life, as the most meet symbol of the Creator of this 
round world, with all its wondrous forms of beings ? When, 
too, in that carefully excavated tomb, with its long gallery, 
and in the swathed chrysalis whence the sleeper arose in a 
wholly new form and endowed with new powers, they found 
Nature's own example for constructing great catacombs 
wherein they hid their precious mummied dead, to await 
their reappearance on this earth in some wholly new con- 
dition, — an emblem, they believed, not merely of resurrec- 
tion, but also of transmigration." 

In some of the hieroglyphics, the scarab is seen 
helping the soul heavenward. Thus, when a funeral 
boat finds its passage to the holy lake barred by a 
bridge, this kindly beetle is shown, hanging from 
heaven by its hind legs, while with its fore claws 



32 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

it raises the bridge, and so allows the boat to pass. 
This scene typifies the resurrection. 

The manufacture of scarabs and funeral beads 
is carried on with great industry at Birmington, 
and in spite of repeated experiences of the fictitious 
character of various mouldy and ancient-looking 
beetles sold on the street of Cairo, the temptation 
to buy is occasionally too strong for prudence. On 
rare occasions it happens that a tourist who has 
been weak enough to yield to an offer of a royal 
cartouche for five piastres, finds that he has bought 
a real antique, worth at least twenty-five pounds in 
London. 

The profit in mummies has also promoted their 
manufacture in myriads at Luxor, whence they 
are sent to all countries. We are told that one 
firm alone manufactures hundreds for a prominent 
museum, and tickets them Rameses or Pharaoh, 
"according to demand." 

One made of an animal skin, and wrapped in the 
►conventional yellow linen bands, was only six 
months old when it went to an American circus, 
which undoubtedly heralded its arrival in flaming 
posters as "guaranteed genuine." 

But this is only the first stage in the catalogue 
of antiquities. Farther on are the quaintest little 
treasures of the museum, — the ornaments of an 
Egyptian lady's dressing-tables, little boxes for the 



GIZEH. 33 

kohol, which ladies used some centuries ago to 
enhance the beauty of their eyes, — just as modern 
beauties of Cairo do to-day; or a dainty covered 
wooden case for perfume, the handle a female figure 
in the act of swimming, holding in her outstretched 
hands a duck, the body of which is hollowed to 
receive the perfumery, while the wings form the 
cover; and prettiest of all, a gilded fan, delicately 
fashioned, with the holes still visible which held 
the ostrich feathers with which it was originally 
furnished. On the mural paintings, every detail of 
fashion is depicted with- the accuracy of a modern 
"Ladies ' Book," the trimmings, the furbelows, and 
head-gear then in vogue, even to the latest Theban 
patterns in couches and Luxor chairs. We know 
also that a wig was considered the proper thing 
for the grand dames of the fourth dynasty, as you 
may see one for yourself on the shelves of the 
Gizeh Museum. There is nothing which palls on 
me so soon as a great numbered case of ancient 
jewelry, and I seem to see them yet in their yellowed 
invaluableness, — these crushed and beaten bracelets 
and amulets labelled the "Jewels of Queen Hah- 
hotep. " It is very wrong, I know, to pass over 
them with so little notice, but my lack of enthu- 
siasm and devotion was supplied by half-a-dozen of 
the fair sex, who will speak very affectionately of 
the glittering diadems and superb bracelets next 

3 



34 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

winter, as they cluster around a log fire in some far- 
distant New England home. 

Through the great rooms built in a serious style, 
and whose beauty consists in massive solidity, filled 
with statuettes and images of sacred animals, — 
"bleating gods," as they are called by an English 
poet, — we finally reach the celebrated sculptures 
of the Hyksos period, finding that each of these 
great kings has an expression peculiarly his own, 
the personality asserting itself in the individuality 
of his postures, the gifts he presents to his tutelary 
goddess, and the traces of pride and conquest the 
stern physiognomy represents. Nowhere does an 
Ethiopian face obtrude itself; and the portrait 
heads of the sphinx kings are of the Semitic, 
Arabian, or Shepherd types, representing the races 
who finally became so powerful that they overthrew 
the armies of the Pharaohs and became masters of 
the whole of lower Egypt. So it happened that 
when Joseph came to Egypt he found on the throne 
a monarch of a race kindred to his own, although 
maintaining the customs and ancient laws of the 
Pharaohs. At El Kat there is an inscription very 
legible on an ancient sepulchre which makes men- 
tion of a famine, perhaps identical with the one 
which brought the patriarch Jacob and his family 
to Egypt. This tomb was built by a naval officer, 
father of Aahmes I., who embellished Thebes, the 



GIZEH. 35 

Hyksos capital, with magnificent edifices, about four 
centuries before the exodus. 

The engraved inscription runs like this : "When 
a famine prevailed for many years, then I gave them 
the city corn during each famine." 

Very little has been said concerning the coal- 
black granite bust with a wing-shaped wig, un- 
doubtedly that of the "new king" which "knew not 
Joseph ; " it is certainly a strange sensation to be- 
hold his face carved in granite, worthy of high- 
wrought sentiment and serious contemplation, but 
it may well startle you to be told that in a few 
moments you will be in his actual presence. 

When one is brought face to face with the very 
bodies of the mightiest of earth's princes, of whose 
cruel oppression one has heard from childhood, a 
traditional awe seizes you; and you fear lest the 
dead should only be dissembling, and. resenting per- 
haps your curious gazing, step down from their glass 
cases and suddenly appear in their old seats of 
power. Mentally reviving the past and seriously 
retrospecting, is apt to result in reaction to the 
comical side of our composite nature; and I found 
myself roused from a dreamy revery and once more 
in the Christian present, for a crowd of Cook's 
tourists, who evidently had neglected their early 
Biblical education, were rushing hastily about, 
glancing at the printed inscriptions on the withered 



36 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

royal mummies in a search of the Pharaoh who 
is supposed by all good people to be at the bottom 
of the Red Sea. However, the inherent serious- 
ness of the open coffins of the ancient kings had the 
effect of checking to a certain degree the usual 
tourist mockery. 

It is written of the mighty sepulchres at Thebes 
and Memphis that "the kings of the nation lie in 
glory, every one in his own house;" for if there 
was one thing dearer than another to a Pharaoh, it 
was these glorious tombs, and nothing could have 
been more bitter to these exclusive aristocrats than 
the idea of a communistic graveyard in a civilized 
palace, for the mummy-cases of priests and poten- 
tates are all ticketed alike and numbered, to aid 
the curious tourist to accomplish the very evil they 
most dreaded, the insulting scrutiny of the bodies 
of their dead. 

The process of mummification, or embalming of 
the bodies, of wealthy Egyptians was a very costly 
affair; it is described as occupying three months, 
during which the different organs — the heart, liver, 
etc. — were removed, packed in separate vases, and 
committed to the especial care of the Four Guar- 
dians of Hades. The cavity was then filled with 
gums and costly spices from Araby, and strips of 
linen dipped in myrrh were wrapped about the body, 
every limb and joint being swathed completely and 



GIZEH. n 

with great skill, as some of these strips are found 
to be actually a thousand yards long. Having then 
gilded and decorated the thick layers of cloth, the 
pasteboard was laid on, when it was dampened to 
take the impress of the human figure. The artists 
skilfully painted it with hieroglyphics, which told 
the story of the lifeless body within, and a stone 
sarcophagus received the mummy, and a programme 
of the final ceremonies of the day of judgment. 

In some cases, the body, swathed in linen, lies 
exposed in the mummy-case, which is modelled 
to represent the head and figure of the dead one. 
The feet are generally bare, and, as in Pharaoh's 
case, are revealed to each curious gazer, while 
Ebers speaks of a mummy the soles of whose feet 
had been removed, in order to spare the dread halls 
of Amenti from being soiled in passing through 
them. Amulets and precious stones were also 
deposited among the bandages, — an especially 
valuable one doing duty for the heart. 

Of all the hundreds of ancient temples that 
spring up in stony magnificence on the narrow 
green belt of soil which we call Egypt, each one, no 
matter how provincial in other respects, had its 
establishment for the process of mummification. 1 A 
dead Egyptian, after being given over to priestly 

1 For the details of Egyptian burial I am indebted to C. F. Gor- 
don-Cummings. 



38 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

embalmers, was restored at the end of seventy days 
to his disconsolate family, who disposed of him in 
a cupboard until such time as the finances of the 
friends warranted an expensive funeral, when the 
"family skeleton " was brought out of the hidden 
place, and the relatives having assembled, a proces- 
sion was formed, when the offerings of ointment, 
wines, and golden images, which accompanied the 
mummy to the "Sacred Lake," were carried as 
usual by women throwing dust on their heads and 
beating their breasts courageously, strengthened, 
we are told, by no other draught than that from the 
amphora of their affection. 

The soul's passage through the regions of the 
dead is described and pictured in the Liturgy of the 
Dead, which was the great literary glory of the old 
Egyptian religion. 

In one of the chapters of this remarkable book, 
an Osirian lit de justice is introduced, managed by 
forty-two Assessors, holding court by the side of 
a sacred lake, artificially made for this purpose in 
every Egyptian province. A venerable predecessor 
of the Greek Charon was appointed to ferry over 
the dead soul en route to his place in the family 
vault. Before this coveted desideratum could be 
accomplished, the solemn ordeal of trial before 
Osiris was to be undergone. The questions of this 
minister for spiritual affairs were directed towards 



GIZEH. 39 

the omission and commission of such sins as would 
be equally grievous in the nineteenth century, the 
crimes to be answered were rigidly inquired into by 
each of the forty-two avenging accusers, and the 
plaintiff spirit thus states his case to one: "O thou 
who dost crack the bones, I have not lied;" "O 
thou with flaming eyes, I have not played the hypo- 
crite. " To another he answers, " I have not been 
a drunkard. " " I have not blasphemed the gods, 
nor been undutiful, nor sworn falsely." This is the 
soul's side of the case, spoken in self-defence. While 
listening to the oratory, the judges take the precau- 
tion of securing direct evidence, and order the heart 
to be weighed in the balance, held by Horus the 
Dawn, son of Osiris. 

If proven guilty, the defendant's mummy was not 
permitted to enter on the last voyage in the sacred 
boat, but was doomed to leave Paradise, and, not 
even allowed to stand disconsolately at the gate, 
like the Peri, was compelled to transmigrate into the 
form of that animal which his character most re- 
sembled while on earth, if not condemned to suffer 
the more shameful fate of a return to the position 
of skeleton in a closet, while the disgraced family 
found the means of atoning financially for his mis- 
doings. Should the deceased have been falsely 
accused, grave penalties are attached to his heavenly 
prosecutor; and the happy mummy enters the " Ship 



40 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

of God " and sails along the Ocean of Infinity, tak- 
ing the shape most agreeable to himself, his final 
entrance to the tomb-chamber on the opposite bank 
of the lake being typical of the redeemed one's 
gaining his rest in a celestial home, "where the 
lotus and the flowery reeds are forever in blossom." 
" Here they reap the corn and reap the fruits under 
the eyes and smile of the Lord of Joy, who exhorts 
them thus : ' Take your sickles, reap your grain, 
carry it into your dwellings, that ye may be glad 
therewith, and present it as a pure offering unto 
God. ' By inscriptions on ancient tombs we are 
told that the bodies of the occupants who found 
favor with the Great Judge, and have been acquitted, 
inhabit the tomb in blissful repose, while the 
"Anchiu" — that is, living ones — rejoice in the 
presence of their Creator. To an Egyptian, his 
palace was merely an inn, and the tomb his eternal 
dwelling-place, which did not, however, prevent 
the latter from being bought, sold, or exchanged as 
occasion and circumstances demanded; and owing 
to the fact that the eternal resting-places were in 
the hands of the priesthood, a great revenue was 
obtained from the forced sale of a family tomb to 
a more prosperous patron, who could better afford it. 
That the justified ones enjoyed perpetual peace, 
and were considered the most fortunate possessors 
of the tree of life, the fruit of which made gods of 



GIZEH. 41 

all who tasted it, that they were destined to a 
glorious immortality, and not to be hopelessly 
mourned and regretted is evident from the cheerful 
funeral songs, actually chanted to harp accompani- 
ment at the feasts of an ancient Egyptian. 

The original of the following " Song of the 
Harper," according to H. D. Rawnsley, who quotes 
it, was found in the tomb of Neferhotep at Abbel- 
Kurnah, near Thebes, and is declared to be a good 
specimen of the poetry of the eighteenth dynasty. 
Neferhotep is represented sitting with his wife 
and sister, Renmi-m-ast-nek, his son Ptahmes and 
his daughter Ta-Khat standing by their side with 
the harper established in a seat, — doubtless one of 
those luxurious bronze chairs labelled 2364 in the 
Museum, feet and arms in the form of. lions, and 
the back consisting of a hawk with outspread 
wings. The rhythmic words are addressed to the 
departed as well as the guests at his banquet, the 
poem assuming all the while that the former is still 
alive. 

THE SONG OF THE HARPER. 

I 70O-I4OO B. C 

THIS is the song the harper used to sing 
In the tomb chapel of the Osirian, 
The blessed Neferhotep, Amen's priest. 



42 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

I. 

Neferhotep, great and blest, 

Of a truth is sleeping ; 
We as surety for his rest, 

All good charges keeping. 
Since the day when Ra and Turn 

Ran his first of races, 
Fathers pass, and after come 

Children in their places. 
Certain as great Ra appears, 

Sires are sons begetting, 
Man begets, and woman bears, 

Sure as Turn is setting. 
Breezes from the morning blown 

Every man inhaleth, 
To his place then going down, 

Woman-born, he faileth. 

ii. 

May this day in joy return, 

Speed it, holy father ; 
Scent these oils we pour and burn, 

Take the flowers we gather. 
In thy heart, as in thy shrine, 

See thy sister dwelling ; 
Round her arms and bosom twine 

Lotus flowers, excelling. 
Lo ! she sits beside thee close ; 

Let the harp delight thee ; 
Let our singing banish woes, 

Leave the cares that spite thee. 



GIZEH. 43 



Joy thee till the pilgrim band 
One day shall have started, 

Enter to thy silent land, 
Welcome, and long parted. 



in. 

That this day with joy may speed, 

Patriarch, grant assistance ; 
Whole of heart and pure of deed 

Past from Earth's existence. 
His life shared the common lot, 

Here is no sure dwelling; 
He who just now was, is not, 

And his place past telling. 
So it has been since the sun 

Rose, so must be, O man ! 
Eyes just open, then as one 

Never born of woman. 
In the shades, upon the brink 

Of the sacred river, 
'Mid the ghosts thy soul doth drink 

Draughts of life forever. 



rv. 

If when harvest fails, the poor 
Cry to thee for feeding, 

Give, so honored evermore 
Shall thy name be speeding. 



44 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

Give, so to thy funeral feast 

Crowds will come, adoring ; 
In his panther skin, the priest 

Wine to thee outpouring. 
Cakes of bread and staves of song 

Will be thine, elected 
Stand before god Ra, the throng 

Of thy friends, protected. 
Harvests duly shall return, 

Nor thy Shu forsaken ; 
While in hell the lost ones burn, 

Glorious shalt thou waken. 



v. 

Neferhotep, pure of hand, 

Speed the day, we pray thee ; 
Not the buildings thou hast planned 

Could avail to stay thee. 
All his wealth this little earth 

For his rest containeth, 
This poor ash is all his worth — 

Look ye ! what remaineth. 
When the moments came that he 

Sought the realms of heaven, 
Not one jot might added be, 

Not one moment given. 
They whose barns are crammed with corn, 

One day make a finish ; 
Death will laugh their wealth to scorn, 

Death their pride will 'minish. 



G1ZEH. 45 

VI. 

Friends, ye all one day go hence ; 

Be your hearts discerning ; 
Mind ye of the bourne from whence 

There is no returning. 
Honest lives will then have proved 

Gain, but loathe transgressing ; 
Be ye just, for justice, loved, 

Brings a good man blessing. 
Be we coward, be we brave, 

Rich in friends, forsaken : 
None of us escape the grave, — 

All alike are taken. 
Give of thine abundance, give, 

And to truth attending, 
Blest by Isis shalt thou live 

Happy, to thine ending. 

And so we come back to the vast, almost vacant 
salon, to the pink and gray mummies of a royal 
race, not one of whom lived after the year iooo 
b. c. Ranged in a large circle, the gilded and 
painted cases gleaming like a sun-suffused corona 
under the bright central dome, Thothmes II. , king 
of the eighteenth dynasty, Rameses III., founder 
of the twelfth dynasty, and then the mightiness of 
Rameses II., Pharaoh in the flesh, are before us in 
their Assyrian coffins, shaped as nearly as possible 
to fit the body, and elaborately decorated with 
golden hawks and winged emblems of royalty. 



46 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

The original coffin of Rameses II. was destroyed 
about the twenty-first dynasty, according to an 
hieratic inscription, which relates that tomb in- 
spectors visited the Rameseum as late as the year 
i ioo. Some writings on papyrus lately discovered 
contain the information that the royal tombs were 
desecrated about that time, the gold was stolen, the 
sacred mummies, amulets, and ornaments taken 
without hesitation, while the modern sacrilege of 
body-snatching did not at all enter the plan of the 
robbers. After that, Pharaoh and his father, Seti I., 
were carried off and removed for safety to the tomb 
of Queen Ansera, which was also broken into, and 
the wandering mummies were bumped and rattled 
up the steep incline to the Valley of the Kings in 
the Theban mountains. It must be acknowledged 
that in stature, at least, Pharaoh was great indeed ; 
his form nearly outlines the mummy-case where he 
lies, bound around with the yellow linen bands, a 
withered warrior, who in life measured six feet, 
three inches, in height. There is, however, about 
the blackened mould of the mighty king a good 
foundation to reconstruct his peculiarities of face 
and figure as they appeared in life. Half a glance 
would reveal the strength and character which lies 
in the high forehead, the dignity of chin and mouth, 
and the strange and sinister expression of the 
beaked nose of the Hebraic type, singularly like 



GIZEH. 47 

unto the aged, hoary expression of the unfeathered 
beak of a young crow. However, beyond the fact 
of his gray hairs, and eyebrows like dandelion 
down, the straight back and powerful shoulders 
give little hint of an old man who has passed the 
limit of his threescore years and ten. And this is 
the charred debris of the wonderful man who lights 
up the poetry of Pen-ta-tur into images of radiant 
splendor; addressed by the bard as "gracious Lord " 
and "bravest King," "Savior," "Guard of Egypt in 
the battle," the Pharaoh who, in the conflict with 
the Khita, uprose like a sun-god, donned his armor 
and mighty weapons, and with the noble horses, 
"Victory of Thebes," dashed alone into the midst of 
the fray, calling on his Father Ammon to remember 
the noble monuments and temples dedicated to him 
which should stand a thousand years, the "tall 
gates and wondrous works beside the Nile to last 
until eternity, the obelisks conveyed from Ele- 
phantin's Isle, to remember also who sent ships 
upon the sea, to pour wealth into the temple's 
treasury, and to remember him who commanded 
these things, and who now beseeches the Lord's 
favor and help in his time of necessity, knowing 
that Ammon' s grace is better far to me than a 
million fighting men and ten thousand chariots be." 
And Ammon, lover of a brave heart, finding a 
spirit he could rejoice in, hastened to the mighty 



48 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

child of earth and fought with him, standing beside 
him, hurling the darts and saving the blades until 
the horsemen of Khita land sank in the water of 
Arunsha's tide, as crocodiles fall from a bank, while 
the chief's enemies and their king were left alone. 
None escaped who put not their trust in Ammon, 
for the poem 1 ends with the words of Pharaoh : " I 
slew, I slew, and slew." 

But Rameses II., beloved of Ra, the sun-god, 
is most interesting in another and more familiar 
role as the Pharaoh of the oppression, — the " new 
king over Egypt which knew not Joseph." Brugsch 
Bey, in 1881, brought to Cairo the sheeted corpse 
of the man who issued an order to the taskmasters, 
the armed police of Egypt, relating to the Isra- 
elites, which for relentless cruelty holds its own 
without fear or favor against any lettre de cachet 
in modern times. 

It was these bituminous lips that framed the 
decree for the murder of the innocents, not less 
selfishly than Herod the Great, who feared his 
kingdom menaced by another child of Israel, and 
it was this presence from whom the Hebrews 
appealed to their God, "who heard their sorrow- 
ings, and remembered his covenant with Abraham, 
with Isaac, and with Jacob." His feet have been 

1 Heroic Poem of Pen-ta-ur, 1326 B. c, relating the victory of 
Rameses II. over the Khita, 1328 b. c. 



GIZEH. 



49 



rubbed with henna, the red dye which blooms on 
the finger-tips of modern Egyptians, and they dis- 
play, besides, great strength at the ankles. The 
guide with accustomed eyes noticed for us the 
wound in the side made by the priest who re- 
placed the human heart of Pharaoh with one equally 
as stony and made of cornelian. So this is Pharaoh 
in his death-chamber; once the little boy child of 
the wall picture of Karnak, fighting by the side 
of his father Seti, who now lies so peacefully beside 
him, the warrior energies so plainly carved in the 
stern features and lurking still in the desiccated 
frame of the best-preserved mummy at Gizeh. 




ON THE NILE. 
4 



FROM A CAIRO JOURNAL. 

\T 7 HAT are the Cairene bazaars like? Well, 
* * nothing that I had imagined. Until I saw 
them, I was under the impression that the Turks 
were a silent and impassive race, — travellers usually 
say so; but the rush, the excitement, the shouting, 
and the resistless sweep of humanity in a narrow 
bazaar would humble a French boulevard. Stoop- 
ing under the flapping awnings in the street of the 
spice merchants this morning, I followed the drago- 
man into the dusky-tinted atmosphere of the long 
lane of perfume booths, where the sweet scents of 
Araby and the precious attar of rose in large and 
small jars are stored away on the shelves which line 
the little draped dukkan, usually a recess only 
about six feet in width, freighted with smoke and 
the oppressive smell of dried flowers. We sit down 
on a bare wooden platform nearly waist high, with- 
out rug or mat, and the very counterfeit of its 
neighbors for a good distance on either side. 

The shop is open to the street, and a curtain now 
looped aside answers for a door when the owner 



FROM A CAIRO JOURNAL. 5 1 

goes to his dinner or his devotions. Glass jars of 
the apothecary type, containing ambergris, sandal- 
wood, and attar-of-rose essences, usually share the 
opposite shelves, and nowhere in the world does 
shopping become so fascinating an amusement as 
in these scented regions. The Arab has never 
learned that time is money; and his patience and 
delightful coffee, combined with honeyed phrases, 
make the long seance, which every purchase entails, 
a real pleasure. Before the compliments and coffee 
have ceased, you begin with the greatest assumed 
indifference the bargaining for the bright-colored 
bottles with their thousand rose leaves compressed 
into so many golden drops ; then having been in- 
formed of the price of what pleases you most, a 
little word easily learned, and repeated in an as- 
cending scale, denotes your astonishment at the 
sum demanded: la! la! la! you cry, each time more 
negatively than before. It sometimes takes two or 
three days for the most trifling purchase, and innu- 
merable visits and white ribbon stirrup-cups be- 
sides, until the neighboring merchants begin to 
know you, and salaam with friendly interest, but, 
loyally enough, do not offer to tempt you away from 
your own particular dealer, who sits contentedly on 
the mastaba seat, smoking his nargileh in confi- 
dence. " Saib, Saib " (Very well, I '11 take it) ; " Min 
Shanah " (For thy sake), he says at last, accepting 



52 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

several piastres less than his "denier prix" of the 
day before; then if it is the precious attar of rose 
which is in question, the test is applied, and to 
assure oneself the article is genuine, a drop is 
burned on a piece of tissue paper. If real, not 
a trace of the liquid is left to stain the paper. 
Inscriptions over many Arabian shops fail to indi- 
cate the business transacted over the coffee cups; 
it is customary to inscribe Koran phrases, which 
shine so calmly over the petty cacklings of the com- 
mercial world below them. "O Allah! thou who 
helpest us in want ! " " O Allah ! thou who openest 
the gates of profit ! " These exclamations are often 
heard on opening the shops in the morning, and are 
repeated frequently with a view to facilitate the 
sales. I have heard that shopkeepers also use the 
most endearing terms on the most uncalled for 
occasions ; fortunately these phrases are reserved 
for the natives, or one does not understand them. 
On a ledge of wood protruding into the street of 
the silver bazaar, crouches a fellah-woman shrouded 
in an indigo sheet, her elbows touching her knees, 
holding her black-veiled face in her two copper- 
colored hands, weighted with golden rings. Soli- 
tary as an "eagle on his chosen peak," she is 
viewing the heavy anklets and bracelets which will 
be her little daughter's wedding portion, while the 
booth is lighted up with glittering bawbles. From 



FROM A CAIRO JOURNAL. 53 

his corner in the depths of the den, the Arab is 
tempting his veiled customer. " Oh, my eyes, 
look here!" and "You sweet dear one!" he cooes, 
protesting disinterested interest, with tender words. 
What the effect of this is on the intended purchaser, 
one cannot judge. The eyes alone are uncovered, 
and they tell nothing; a long black yashmak covers 
the other features entirely. The woman's thoughts 
flutter among the ornaments, then with surprising 
swiftness she swoops down from her perch, picks 
over and selects her jewelry, which is tied in pink 
paper and borne away to a mud village in the 
depths of a cavernous pocket, which, unsuspected, 
is concealed under her linen drapery. 

The bazaars of Cairo are long corridors, where 
carriages may not venture; but if you go on a 
donkey, or if walking, you are almost able to touch 
the opposite walls with extended arms. Each 
bazaar is a quarter devoted to its particular trade. 
The money-changers have theirs; the leather 
merchants also; and the carpet-dealers wax fat and 
sleek in their separate sharia, set on each side 
with the familiar raspberry and blue rugs, woven 
in the mellow combinations of green, red, and 
yellow, which Nature taught the East in the begin- 
ning of the world. The old commercial centre of 
Cairo, Khan el-KhalilT, is a labyrinth possessing 
neither beginning nor end. You come across 



54 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

streets banked with Persian pottery and beautiful 
jewels, emerging into lanes filled with barbarous 
concoctions of pumpkin and cucumbers, which act 
like a violent discord as they greet the olfactory 
nerve; still those narrow tracks where the houses 
join in perspective overhead, from their great 
height, give shade, and bright awnings protect 
alike the proprietor of a cafe or a tinker in brass, 
and are all they require. The narrow streets are 
wide enough for a foot passenger, for the Arabs 
rarely use a carriage; and the shops of six or seven 
feet in width are quite large enough for the accom- 
modation of the two or more purchasers in their 
sleepy transactions. When the old order changes 
in Cairo, it is to be hoped the new will not creep 
into the shops, so Oriental, picturesque, and beauti- 
fully adapted to their use, end, and aim. 

The mosques of Cairo make splendid pictures. 
The camera will not betray crumbling pinnacles, 
ruined fountains, or the gray debris of fallen 
columns. A photograph of the mosque of Tooloon 
shows the beautiful arcades separated by pillars 
covered with the most exquisite ornamentation, but 
it never reveals the truth of these winding inscrip- 
tions, which decorate the frieze, nor will it show 
them to be paint and plaster, which fritter away in 
fragments every day. 

Ahmad-Ibu-Tooloon, when he chose a Christian 



FROM A CAIRO JOURNAL. 55 

architect to build his mosque, did so with the con- 
fessed intention of making it indestructible, and, as 
an added precaution, he ordered that all the mate- 
rial used in its construction should be of brick or 
plaster, and, not to take chances, credited his 
builder with the sum of a million francs for first 
expenses. From the citadel hill, this oldest Cairo 
mosque appears somewhat like an immense fortifi- 
cation; the walls are sculptured in trefoil design, 
like the round towers of England. Abbas Pasha 
remodelled the superb building into a military hos- 
pital, filled in the arches with plaster walls, and 
broke away the pillars which cost Ahmad a life- 
long outlay more than a thousand years ago. To- 
day the mosque, as an hospital, is shattered and 
fallen, but the sick of Cairo cling round it still 
with faith in its miraculous powers; it is the ren- 
dezvous of all ills and all miseries. 

The Mohammedan loveth marvels; and the cura- 
tive resources of the old mosque are not more 
impossible to believe in than the supernatural 
legends of its construction. 

The guide, who persisted in prowling around 
with his stock in trade of stories well in hand, in 
spite of withering glances and an evident desire 
on our part to be left alone, managed to resume from 
time to time his parrot-like repetitions, explaining 
proudly that the mosque had been created before the 



56 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

earth ; the waters alone covered the earth ; and the 
Creator, navigating the sea, paused on the summit 
of the kebla, having come to the end of the deep. 

It is impossible to discover how the honor of a 
premundane construction should befall this edifice, 
but confidence in the story is evident from the 
amateur steamboats chalked over the walls repre- 
senting the event. 

Another kebla is surrounded by the most distress- 
ing cripples in the world, — the lepers; and it is 
believed to have been consecrated by the prayers of 
the daughter of Ali, and the sister of Husen and 
Hasan, the first martyrs of Mohammedan legend. 

Passing up and down before the great bronze 
doors is a continual procession of poor Arabs and 
fellaheen children, and from these elements were 
recruited the very first girls' school in Cairo. 

It was the Empress Eugenie who put the proud 
Ismail Pasha to the blush on the occasion of the 
opening of the Suez Canal. The Khedive, over- 
weeningly confident in his European innovations, 
was showing New Cairo to the French Queen, who 
expressed great pleasure in his eccentric construc- 
tions, and innocently asked : " But where is the 
girls' school ? " the boasted likeness to Paris hav- 
ing broken down in this particular, amid so much 
that was modern and European in the plaster sea of 
yellow palaces. 



FROM A CAIRO JOURNAL. 57 

The next day the Pasha called his Minister of 
Public Instruction and ordered a palace immediately 
constructed where the daughters of nobles could 
obtain an European education; and to lose no time 
in repairing this very evident rift in his modern 
lute, Ismail endeavored to open at once a small 
house for the purpose. It was with heart's sorrow 
that the Pasha viewed his failure, — not a noble 
among them would send his daughter to the Khe- 
divial school; and at length, in great indignation, 
this rich man of modern times conceived the idea 
of establishing a sort of primary class in the beau- 
tiful shadows of the old sanctuary, and compelling 
the neighboring children to come in literally at the 
point of a sword, — a sort of Egyptian form of com- 
pulsory education, — thus initiating the first girls' 
school of Cairo, which was gathered together from 
the lame, halt, and blind in the crowded quarter of 
the mosque of Tooloon. 

It is extraordinary the number of ruined and 
half-ruined mosques one passes on the way from 
quaint old Tooloon to the most beautiful buildings 
in Cairo, the splendid Garni Sultan Hasan at the 
foot of the citadel near the Place Rumeleh ; this 
mosque, in its time, will soon be a ruin too,— but 
better that than a restoration such as has been 
attempted in many others. 

Turning a corner in a rock-cut street, the cupola 



58 



IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 



and minaret of the mosque of Hasan stand out in 
royal purples against the lemon, pink, and blue of 
the sunset. The proportions reflect something of 




AN EGYPTIAN ORCHESTRA. 

a cathedral, for the interior is simple and pure, the 
design is cruciform, the four arms of the cross 
vaulted and pointed, while exquisite arabesque 
letters interlaced with flowers are cut in the walls 
with Cufic inscriptions, and the court of the foun- 
tains, the lovely ornaments ranged around the tomb, 
and the interesting capitals of the columns make 
one wish to stay a week in it. 

In the honeycomb capitals which the architects 



FROM A CAIRO JOURNAL. 59 

call pendentives, I believe, numbers of pigeons 
make their nest, and a spark of color still remains 
in the decorations which, though faded, nevertheless 
show forth the old glory of the " superb mosque. " 

We had to go through some of the oldest quar- 
ters, with a dreary monotony of latticed windows, 
and into a lane more and more winding and irregu- 
lar, to visit El Burdanese, the little jewel mosque, 
which has escaped an embalmment between the red 
covers of the guide-book. You seem to enter one 
of those Eastern regions which Hafiz loved to 
describe. Pale bits of blue tiling are let in over 
the doorways ; mosses have sprung up between the 
disjointed stones of the old gates, and black water 
stagnates in the fountains; the picturesque houses 
look best in the shadows of the narrow alleys, and 
the busy life of Cairo rarely penetrates the half- 
asleep population of this silent, enchanted place, 
where among the ruins "the quiet colored end of 
evening smiles miles on miles." 

A solitary sign of life is the picture appearing 
beneath an archway, — a picture common enough in 
Cairo, — of a weazened old woman sitting in the open 
street in front of her poor little house, sorting 
beans ; and of the brown ones she make a potage 
after they have been placed in water, — a simple 
meal, often eaten by the Egyptians without common 
salt or other medicaments, for this luxury is so rare 



6o IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

among the people that a sign "Vente du sel " is 
especially displayed as an indication that it may 
be procured inside the shop. 

The sacristan of the mosque, who answered the 
summons of a bell suspended outside, was in no 
wise shaken from his anticipations of a fee by 
scruples against our entrance into the shrine 
mosque, because there were not enough slippers to 
distribute among us; but the straw mattings were 
rolled aside to a dusty corner to ease his conscience 
and preserve the sanctity of the building against 
the tread of an unbeliever. 

Five hundred years ago, a pious Mohammedan 
parent erected the lovely chapel for the use of a son 
who persistently refused to perform his devotions 
outside his own domain, and was presented by his 
father with an especial mosque adjoining his palace. 
It is a charming little tale; and a vague suspicion 
of the real motives of this exacting youth, who was 
perhaps more irritated than pleased by the appended 
sanctuary, does not spoil its old-world flavor. 
However, the beautiful building remains, in spite 
of the truth or falsehood of the story,— evidently 
not a show mosque, so hidden away in the heart of 
the strange old house, with the grayish bloom of 
age on the gloomy walls ; but still it is a gem in its 
small way, built from a sweet devotion, all of inlaid 
ivory panels and gold-suffused ceiling, "for gold 



FROM A CAIRO JOURNAL. 6 1 

means love," the poet says; and the burnished pearl 
of the pulpit could also be described in the poetic 
simile of a "sad, slow, silver smile," when the sun- 
rays touch it, from the stained glass tracings far 
above in the glowing walls. 

Graceful Cufic inscriptions are delicately cut on 
the smooth surfaces of the panelling which circles 
the enclosure, and above them are linked the texts, 
which are also ascriptions. "To God all that is in 
Heaven and on Earth!" "O perfect One! O healer! 
O defender! " and bound in the tortoise-shell mono- 
grams on the pulpit is the creed of Islam. 

The block of the panels is ebony. The rainbow 
tints are pearl and ivory, and incrusted among the 
intricate carvings in glorious prismatic colors are 
the words "Oh, ye who have believed, pray to Him 
and salute Him !" while from the mosaic glass of 
the windows honeycombed with tiny openings, the 
soft light and a faint breeze come in together. The 
stillness of the place is undisturbed by two women, 
who come occasionally to pray in the gallery; at 
other times it is quite deserted, and always twilight 
and still, while with closed eyes you can listen to 
the silence of the vanished voices which have 
prayed here. 

" O Angel of the East ! One, one, golden look 
across the waters to this twilight nook; the far, sad 
waters, Angel, to this nook ! " 



IN THE FAYUM. 

\ FTER all, it was from a casual remark made at a 
-*■ Cairo dinner that we went a-wandering to the 
Fayum's ancient patch of green oasis, which re- 
sembles an immense leaf drifted out on the Libyan 
Desert, veined by various canals and stemmed by 
graceful curves of the Bahr Yusuf (or Canal of 
Joseph), with its silken current. The upshot of the 
conversation was that only fifty-seven miles south of 
Cairo, westward to the low-lying desert which skirts 
the Nile, there exists an extensive oasis, a sand-sur- 
rounded Venice, due to the efforts of the prehistoric 
Nile to dig out a channel for itself amid the border- 
ing hills. Having encountered a natural depression 
near these Libyan mountains, the inflowing waters 
had spread out annually in this sandy rendezvous a 
deposit of great richness, and in time deepened the 
marshy borders into a bright clear lake. 

A shining light of the days of Amenemhat III. of 
the twelfth dynasty is responsible for the grand 
idea of reclaiming this Nile deposit from inundations, 
and of laying out the fresh land for a watering-place 



IN THE FAYOM. 63 

and fashionable resort for Egyptian aristocracy, 
where the wind would blow clear and soft from the 
desert, and the people could delight in the blue lake, 
inexpressibly sweet amid its setting of summer 
grasses. At length this was done, and they called 
the place El Fayum. That it is still an unfamiliar 
name to tourists who go up and down the Nile with- 
out ever having heard of it, is somewhat due to the 
fact that Cook does not sell tickets, or provide 
information of its features or its people. Woman's 
curiosity quickened at the extraordinary prospect 
of unimagined villages and unfamiliar lakes, which 
were dotted about freely in the description given 
in the aforesaid remarks. A fellow-traveller who 
had exhausted Egypt's favorite stamping-grounds, 
and was longing for new pyramids to conquer, 
listened intently, and striving steadily for some time 
to assimilate the salient characteristics of the descrip- 
tion, including lovely palm-fringed lakes, delicious 
air, wretched hotel, and necessary military escort, 
succeeded in reconciling these self-warring facts with 
a suitable regard for personal comfort, and declared 
that, properly equipped, with letters to high places, 
and butter and rolls from Shepheard's, we might our- 
selves venture to gaze on the mud-brick pyramids of 
Hawara, and even pursue that will-o'-the-wisp of spec- 
ulation, Lake Mceris itself. In spite of the dinner- 
party amusing itself with gentle endeavors to dissuade 



64 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

us from our journey, — evoking unknown hardships 
and alarming escorts, even accusing us of wishing to 
emulate Empedocles, whose foolhardiness was only 
rewarded by Etna indignantly casting out his sandal, 
— before the coffee was served it seemed better sport 
than ever to our curious minds, and all the next day 
was spent in procuring available information and the 
services of a suitable dragoman. Achmet was the 
fifth who was distrustfully surveyed and questioned ; 
and cased in cheap blue and humble browns, he was 
judged favorably where the others, glittering in pic- 
turesque and brilliant garments, failed. A large lady 
in an English tourist's dress had this economic marvel 
up the river, and recommended him in a well-thumbed 
letter, which he produced, in which his economies of 
dress were favorably dwelt on ; moreover, it seemed 
he had better notions of promptitude than ordinary, 
besides knowing all the routes to the Fayum ; his 
relatives lived there, and he expressed a very tender 
love for the place, and was familiar in three languages 
with all its secrets and antiques. This seemed so 
favorable that our bargain was sealed, and a parting 
injunction delivered to find two good side-saddles for 
the excursion. He kissed my hand, made a fine 
salaam, and walked out still ecstatic and exclamatory 
of the good care he would take of " my ladies." 

Next morning Achmet had the saddles leaning 
against a tree in front of the hotel, and a portly pro- 



IN THE FA YUM. 6$ 

prietary sheik was puckering his vicious old face 
over the rental of his shabby saddles. After testing 
the girths of several, and examining their stuffing, 
with a fine contempt for outside appearances, we 
chose two most lacking in looks, but having the 
strongest leather to grip the little beasts who would 
shuffle their hoofs over the vague but fascinating 
Fayoum. " Can have saddles one franc each lady," 
finally concluded the sheik ; then we started forward 
through the early morning mist, bumped and rattled 
through the Place Ezbeklyeh towards the station, 
with the dragoman, saddles, and provisions piled 
high on the vacant spaces of the open victoria. The 
crowd, the shouting, and shrill echoes from impatient 
travellers at the ticket-office, forced us to remain 
apart, on the edge of the squatting clusters of white- 
turbaned sheiks and native women who were guard- 
ing their many-colored possessions while awaiting 
the signal to board the train ; and when our native 
had first cast down a rug bundle from the box, 
apparently containing his limited wardrobe, and then 
himself, sufficient gold-pieces were counted out for 
first-class tickets, and with an unappreciated burst of 
generosity, funds for a second-class ticket were pro- 
vided for our servant, who we noticed pocketed the 
difference in piastres and invested in his accustomed 
accommodation of an open pen-shaped car; of course 
he wanted to be with his caste and have a good 

5 



66 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

talk. There is an upheaval of turbans, and a slow 
movement sets in towards the train ; black people, 
emancipated Soudanese, and Turks advance, wad- 
dling under their cumbersome luggage, through dust 
an inch thick in the railway enclosure, towards the 
opened gateway ; and Achmet, his head sinking for- 
ward under the saddles he is carrying, and clutching 
as many of our personal effects as can be secured by 
his small brown fists, pushes ahead, while around us 
press the "anteeka" merchants, sellers of curios, and 
boyish harlequins who are dispersed by the simple 
method of being scraped away by upbraiding sweeps 
of a native policeman's stick. An old Turk stands 
under a sort of guillotine, where is suspended a bell ; 
he pulls it by a chain ; one soft flute-like ring, and we 
are off. 

Since the completion of the railway, a train starts 
daily from the Bulak-ed-Dakrur station, and proceeds 
so leisurely that anywhere one could climb into the 
carriages without taking the trouble to stop it. 

Cairo is all silvery in the morning mist, and we see 
a magnified caravan crawling in from the desert. A 
long file of camels and figures trudging along tall 
and shadow-like in the haze, and two great yellow 
pyramids, rise out of a sand plateau as if some hurri- 
cane had swept them up from the desert, and they 
had remained petrified in stone. The carriage has 
no curtains, and the dust sifts through and soon 



IN THE FAYUM. 67 

changes the russet leather upholstery to sand-color. 
We sit facing two sportsmen, who never once glance 
at the lovely Medum pyramid, which rises against the 
sky as if cut from a sapphire, and shines like gold 
against its splendid background ; while nearer the 
splashing waters of the Nile are the huge sakiehs, 
with their dripping buckets and oozing creaking 
music. 

We reach Wasta at half after ten, and wait an hour 
for a branch train to creep in from the Fayum. 
There are no time-tables after this ; the arrivals and 
departures depend, as far as we can discover, on the 
wishes of the native locomotive driver. During a 
halt we made acquaintance with a dozen little Arab 
children by aid of a few half-piastres, to which we 
added some Albert biscuit, and tossed an orange to a 
petit maitre in a Wasta compromise of two civi- 
lized garments, evidently the " petted child of wealthy 
parents." 

At last the train signalled an intention to start, but 
was held up by the station-master in compliance with 
our request to have a feather duster applied to the 
linen covers of the compartment. This was slowly 
and thoroughly accomplished under our personal 
supervision. The saddles were mounted therein ; 
then followed the sportsmen's treasures and our- 
selves, by this time elbowed by a mob of screaming 
children, — "Lady, give one piastre," and proclaim- 



68 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

ing with coquettish smiles, "You nice lady, I like 
you." 

We leave Wasta dozing in the shade of a palm- 
grove, and cross a strip of cultivated land to the vil- 
lage of Abu Radi, beyond which the railway makes 
a straight line across the desert, greeting the Bedouin 
encampment en passant with a hoarse tenderness from 
the throttle of the steam-valve. The air which blows 
fresh and uninterrupted across the wide desert from 
Alexandria might be a luxury indeed, if one could 
only have the windows open, but our lungs are fill- 
ing up with sand in alarming quantities ; besides, the 
inevitable flies of the kind that secrete ophthalmic 
poison are swarming in, attracted by the luncheon, 
and are becoming too numerous to be deterred by 
the vigorous use of fly-flaps. And so the hot noon 
comes on us, and the bleak chain of Libyan hills, look- 
ing so coppery and baked, sparkles in the sunshine, 
and seems to glow with the love of it. The sand 
gusts whistle along, breaking the torpid quiet of the 
dry sand-stretches on either side, and the humming, 
vibrating heat intensifies the unendingness of that 
same even sand, broken only when a glittering whirl 
of it climbs high in folds of foam, to dissolve again 
into that land which belongs to no one, and is the 
desert. At Adweh there are a few white mosques, and 
the cultivated land begins ; four women creep out in 
dark garments from a low-browed hut at the station, 



IN THE FAYL/M. 69 

holding in their arms dingy babies, with hardly three 
good eyes among them. They scent the lunch, and 
make a clamor like the birds who fly in and out of 
the almond-trees ; the chicken bones, however, satisfy 
both creations. How neglected it all looks ! noticing 
that, we pass around the sickly flowers, whose faces, 
" burnt blind " in the sun, struggle for elbow-room 
beside a row of palm-trees, tall and calm above the 
hum of voices about the station platform. Palms 
are always inseparable from curves and harmonious 
slants, or their tufts are waving; who ever tires of 
the rough bark, the scales all rippling down the 
trunks, or the endless ranks of outbreaking branches? 
Half an hour later we have left behind everything 
which one knew before in Cairo or, indeed, in our 
conventional lives, and for compensation obtain,' 
among other things, an insight into the ways and 
manner of life of a gentleman and an officer in the 
service of the Khedive, acting in the capacity of 
chief policeman for the Fayum Province, who lives 
at Medinet, the capital of the province, in the little 
low-roofed and pink-washed building across the sand. 
On our appearance at the station we were at once 
taken off to his quarters. The house was a small 
one ; a bare, whitened hall, which is the vertebra of 
the building, opened on a sand-patch in front and a 
dried up garden at the back; and here the officer 
messed with a guardsman sent down from Cairo to 



70 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

learn Arabic, who occupied the white tent in the 
compound. At the outer side of the hall one little 
living room was ornamented with pictures cut from 
the "London Graphic" and "Illustrated News;" the 
merry sports of a Derby day or the faces of sweet 
English girls looked down on the lonely lives of 
these owners of long titles and discouraged hearts. 
They do their work well for the Government, and try 
not to think; but the lack of Europeans and civilized 
customs is gall and wormwood to an exile from Ber- 
muda. It is all like Kipling's stories transferred to 
Egypt, — the touching details of how they live; the 
fever, homesickness, and everything. A small Arab 
boy applied a shoe-brush to our dusty garments, and 
then lunch was ready in the queer hall, where the 
table looked cool and fresh with decorations of daisies 
picked in our honor, and the officers listened eagerly 
to the bits of Cairo gossip we had to relate, while 
various dishes were served by a little Soudanese, 
whom, the captain said, he had bought for thirty-five 
piastres. 

Through the open door we could see the Mudir's 1 
house, flying the red crescent; and with a half-cross 
expression, both officers declared it " ought to be 
pulled down and ' ours ' put up instead, you know." 

The Mudir, the Englishmen tell us, is a strange 

1 The chief official in every province is the mudir, or governor, 
who is assisted by a council, or dhvan, of other officers. 



IN THE FAYUM. ?I 

old figure, who is fond of Europeans, and will con- 
verse for hours with men who do not know a word 
of each other's language. I wonder what they talk 
about. There are no European women in town, it 
seems, but there is a Greek lady living at Adweh, the 
station we passed through thirty miles away on the 
railway, " who is a very good sort," in the officers' 
opinion ; but the companionship of his fellow-man 
in English clothes is denied them for many lonely 
months, when no sportsmen come to the Fayoum. 

Long before I came here I had imagined the 
depression of life lived under such conditions, but 
the colossal loneliness of it was left unpictured until 
I saw the reality. We tried in vain to gain some 
antiquarian information, but they evidently had no 
recourse to these studies to drown ennui. A vague 
notion existed in their minds that there were some 
pyramids straight away from Medinet, but the fallen 
obelisk we had come to see they had not heard of 
and did not believe it existed. They had been here 
many years and never heard any one speak of it, but 
would go and bring one of the native postmasters, 
who might tell us something if we really wanted to 
see it ; but the captain was not quite clear, and very 
much mystified that any one should care at all about 
a broken obelisk half buried in a beanfield. The 
non-appearance for hours of this official, who had 
closed up the post-office for an afternoon siesta, 



72 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

made an excuse for staying as long as we could con- 
sistently take advantage of the hospitality we were 
enjoying ; and after tea at four, the native appeared, 
and expressed the same doubt about the shaft, which, 
however, we knew was somewhere within two miles 
of this place. Laurence Oliphant wrote of it, and 
had personal contact with it; and repeating certain 
phrases which put the matter beyond doubt, all 
walked over to the inn, our future abiding-place, 
where the dragoman had preceded our arrival. Half 
hesitating, yet anxious to prepare the way for our 
unfavorable impression of the only public house in 
the town, the captain confessed, as we walked along, 
in a few words which revealed volumes : " I stood by 
this morning, and saw your rooms washed out my- 
self" The truth was, he had not only done this, but 
contributed big bunches of red roses, and ordered 
suitable blankets and bed-linen; for until our arrival 
they were unknown in the Fayum Hotel. The inn 
was kept by a Greco-Egyptian, who had determined 
to furnish his house without owing anything to Euro- 
pean civilization except the bottles of cheap cognac 
ranged round the middle hall, through which we 
entered. There were rows of tables where chess was 
going on, and the inevitable Oriental pot-pourri of 
smoke and hasheesh sent its fumes up to our unac- 
customed noses through the open centre hall, around 
which our rooms were ranged. No lady's sitting- 



IN THE FAYOM. 71 

room had been indulged in, or ever required, perhaps ; 
and I was puzzled, on receiving the polite attention 
of a call from the Mudir, while turning over his rather 
unique carte-de-visite of yellow isinglass lettered in 
white, whether to receive him in the street or the 
corridor. 

A tiny room, flanked on two sides by the public 
smoking-room of the natives, was the scene of our 
first acquaintance with the Greco-Egyptian cuisine 
of the inn ; and ever afterwards it was relinquished 
in favor of our own apartment, and the menu then 
and there abridged to eggs, jam, and tea, with the 
precious rolls from Shepheard's doled out as sparingly 
as the grain of the Pilgrims. The Egyptian has no 
hours, — he eats where he happens to be when he is 
hungry; and of the three hundred thousand Mussul- 
mans who fling themselves at the foot of Mokattam, it 
is said that at least two-thirds can live upon " the 
Koran, Nile water, and soft bread." 

Twice a day Achmet mysteriously disappeared ; 
and we supposed he was in the bazaars, investing his 
piastres in cheese, spoiled olives, and nuts without 
shells as tid-bits which he could not deny himself. 

Early next morning the dragoman was despatched 
with particular injunctions, in the language he seemed 
best to comprehend, to find two donkeys, " fort grand 
et bien tranquil," which latter specification seemed 
unnecessary, remembering the desiccated frames of 



74 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

the models of anatomy ridden past our door. Under 
the guidance of mine host, Achmet was able to 
present two rather good-looking beasts for our in- 
spection, — for we had discovered that his relatives in 
the Fayum corresponded to his knowledge of the 
languages, and were past finding out. He used to 
ask Seyd, the keenest of the donkey boys, the names 
of things in Arabic, and then, by means of a sentence 
begun, continued, and ended in different tongues, 
tangle up their histories in unscrupulous sputterings. 
Strong in the consciousness of antiquarian zeal, 
and the hope of convincing our late entertainers, we 
started forth to find the obelisk in our very first 
excursion about Medinet. The town is of the usual 
mud-walled character, but has a plan of its own. A 
broad canal, the Bahr Yusuf, flows through the 
middle of the town, and radiates into many branches ; 
it is bordered with well-grown palm-trees, and splash- 
ing sakieh wheels driven by the water itself are the 
rare features of this Egyptian landscape. We ride 
out alone the Bahr Yusuf in the direction of the 
mosque of Kait Bey, a dilapidated building of the 
usual square pattern, with lovely pointed work out- 
lining the beautiful Moorish arches, reflected down 
into the water from the tunnel over which it is built. 
There is another curious and forsaken specimen of 
mosque, Sofi, with an unintelligible history, which I 
do not remember so well as I do the withered speci- 



2 

O 

V) 

O 

a 
« 

o 

> 




IN THE FAYL>M. 75 

men of a beadle who piloted us about, in spite of 
our efforts to understand Achmet's translation of 
his no doubt legendary information. In the north 
of the town are the ruins of the ancient town of 
Crocodilopolis Arsinoe, a polysyllabic legacy which 
is commendably abridged by the natives to Kom 
Faris, for a reason I am unable to explain, unless 
the Western love of abbreviation has advanced the 
advent of electric light and sewing-machines in the 
Fayum. 

Endeavoring to accomplish an inspired sifting of 
the legends and history of the Fayum, the first 
claim is undoubtedly for the speculation concerning 
the transformation of the natural Fayum Lake into 
the artificially constructed Lake Mceris of the old 
traveller Herodotus. The past history of the oasis 
was, on the authority of modern historians, as fol- 
lows : In prehistoric times the Nile was a much 
greater river than now, due to the enormous rainfall. 
The sea which occupied the Nile Valley was then in 
communication with the Red Sea, and below Wasta 
the channel of the Nile Valley very much contracted 
the enormous volume of water, which escaped side- 
ways into the depressed levels of the Libyan Hills 
and Wadi Rayan. Mr. R. H. Brown, in his book on 
Lake Mceris, states that this water would, in finding 
a channel for itself, " erode laterally or scour down 
vertically accordingly as the softer material was in one 



76 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

direction or another." Authentic hints follow which 
show that " the different points of delivery and 
volume of water contributing to the flow, and the 
nature of the rock met with in its path would finally 
determine the form the channel would take at the vari- 
ous stages of its development. Tremendous eddies 
would be produced by projections of hard rock and 
contraction of the irregular channels which would lift 
the material from the bed." So, the upheaval going 
on and the Nile scouring out its bed, a condition of 
levels would come about under which there would 
be an annual inflow during the floods, and an out- 
flow on the floods' subsiding, thus forming a lake. 

Amenemhat III. was a mighty hunter, and to him 
is given the credit of reclaiming the land of the 
province to " hunt the lion and bring back the croco- 
dile a prisoner," solving the problem by a series of 
engineering works, about five thousand years ago, by 
an employment of hydraulic skill which deserves 
another paragraph from Mr. Brown. The project 
consisted of engineering works, admitting water into 
the lake until it attained to a certain height, and then 
erecting a regulator and banks at some point between 
Lahun and Hawara to bar the passage of the Bahr 
Yusuf through the hills, so bringing the waters into 
control, when it would be safe to commence the occu- 
pation of the reclaimed land. A natural Fayiim 
lake already existed, and from these operations be- 



IN THE FAYl/M. 77 

came the artificial Lake Mceris, with its water surface 
of twenty-seven thousand acres, with the old Croco- 
dilopolis on its fertile margin, and the Labyrinth and 
Hawara pyramids, whose dimensions surpassed even 
the enormous regulators on the shores. 

In the middle of the lake, moreover, stood two 
pyramids, rising above the surface fifty fathoms. On 
the top of each a colossal statue seated on a throne 
threw down its broad shadows upon the great white 
waters. 

Medinet-el-Fayum, the ancient Crocodilopolis, is 
a country village ; it is the produce of the country, 
the cereals and simple peasant supplies, that are 
sold in the interminably long bazaar which paral- 
lels the Canal of Joseph. In spite of the soldiers 
who mingle with the animated crowd at the ba- 
zaars, it is the familiar fellah with his long blue gown, 
roped in at the waist, and frequently with only a 
simple brown skull-cap for head-gear, that is carry- 
ing on the bargaining with the comfortable-looking 
merchants, squatting behind their wares, munching 
the sugar-cane. The women of Medinet are prettier 
and less savage than the toilers in the country. Many 
have discarded the traditional veil, and have com- 
menced to dress their locks with long blue grenadine 
and golden ornaments of fine finish. 

Fat black babies, for whom the climate and vege- 
tarian diet have procured a precocious obesity, squat 



78 



IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 



happily in the dirt ; and not a small part of the charm 
of the primitive life of this terrestrial paradise is 
the fact that not a creature calls " Backsheesh," — a 




BKftt 



A BAZAAR BY THE BAHR YUSUF. 



word which we discreetly spell, not to put it in their 
heads : as you would treat a child, do we treat these 
children of Khemi. 

Away to the north we rode, leaving Medinet in a 
sea of greenery, and our path took us to the moulder- 
ing ruins of Crocodilopolis, that had been first called 
Shed, and was the villa town where the Court of 
Memphis enjoyed the lake front and its great ex- 



IN THE FA YUM. 



79 



panse of water, which was Lake Moeris. No one 
would have thought that the deep shadowed walls 
of pointed and rugged outlines, which resemble a 




SOME OLD HOUSES, MEDINET. 



Swiss glacier of frozen mud, according to ancient 
testimony were the remains of the very centre of 
Egyptian splendor. 



80 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

Diodorus Siculus, writing of the lake, called after 
its constructor, tells us that after erecting a tomb and 
two pyramids, one for himself and another for his 
wife, thus expecting to leave an immortal reputation 
for his benefactors, the king felt himself justified in 
encouraging the extravagant tastes of his spouse by- 
granting her the entire revenue of the fisheries for 
her perfumes and cosmetics ; and he records also 
that they brought in a sum of a talent of silver daily, 
for there were said to be twenty-two kinds of fish in 
the lake, and the quantity " taken was so large that 
the numerous hands engaged in the salt-curing 
industry could scarcely keep pace with the work." 

We wind in and out, now west, now south, for the 
ruins are divided by irregular squares and silent pas- 
sages, and the deserted wastes loom up sheer and 
pathless, while the donkeys gallop so near the edge 
of the mud gorges on all sides, that a stumble would 
solve life's problem for a couple of adventurous 
antiquarians. A good deal of nervous worry was 
observable on the part of the dragoman, who 
anxiously scanned the horizon for signs of egress, 
but scorned the clever Seyd's suggestions, until we 
concluded we had come unawares on the mazy laby- 
rinth traditionally located in the Fayum ; and only 
by insisting that Achmet should listen to the native's 
advice, did we ever succeed in seeing the sun again, 
by this time suggestively near the desert's distant 



IN THE FAY&M. 81 

edge. But we did not mind this, once out on the 
pleasant green fields of bean and clover ; and Achmet 
having found he knew nothing of the country, Seyd 
was promoted to go first, and the dragoman, sense- 
lessly enraged, followed on his beast in the rear. 

The sheik of a small village we passed after that, 
stood out on a slight eminence in the long sack-like 
garment of his race, and offered us coffee and the 
fruits of his garden and a greeting. The " prin- 
cesses " do not want refreshment, but can he tell us 
where to find a fallen obelisk? inquired our anxious 
Achmet, with self-confessed ignorance of anything and 
everything in his boasted birthplace. First assuring 
himself that we are not the spies of Brugsch Bey 
or the Gizeh Museum, we are conducted to a hidden 
animal pen, and, the straw being pushed aside, a bit 
of early Egyptian sculpture is uncovered to our gaze 
and the cow's stare, which has been jealously secreted 
from antiquarian grasp in the person of Brugsch Bey, 
who visited these parts two years ago. 

Evidently these relics have an unknown value to 
native eyes, and, still sceptical as to our honest inten- 
tions, the sheik looks very much relieved when we 
pass out and onward. 

The remains of a large temple with a pylon discov- 
ered by M. Schweinfurth was an unconsidered trifle 
scarcely noticed, and also some fragmentary heads 
and hieroglyphic decorations. A shout to a toiling 

6 



82 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

fellah on a steep hill nearly a quarter of a mile away 
is answered, and in the mood to listen to any one 
who offers assistance, the return shout declares that 
this centre of light and learning will volunteer to 
conduct us to the object of the quest. Although I 
have never found belief so difficult in my life, there is 
a wild scamper of ass-flesh in the direction of a very 
far away field, and soon a little white glimmer ap- 
pears through the bean-stalks. Fortune has smiled 
on us in this strange corner of the earth, and the 
obelisk of Usertesen I., broken in two mighty pieces, 
is lying before us, half submerged in the cracked and 
sun-baked earth, which has receded, and shows a 
deep line of dark against the white sides where the 
Nile has traced its burial-marks. One look and then 
another, while the head guardian pulls away the 
grass, and we trace the writing of the inscriptions, 
and the royal cartouche of the king who founded its 
mate at Heliopolis. It must have once been forty- 
six feet in depth, and, like all others, its summit is 
rounded. Still we sit wondering how it came here, 
who brought it; and now neglected and deserted, is 
it not a fitting gravestone of a fallen Fayum ? and 
all the while the donkeys wander off into the fresh 
pasture, and the boys pull the green beans and eat 
them an naturel, displaying a decided preference to 
imitate Nebuchadnezzar instead of enjoying a taste 
of the fruits of knowledge. 



IN THE FA YUM. 83 

The gleam of the soft sunset falls on the white 
flowers of the bean, and a pale streamlet flushes 
pink and silver among the clustering reeds and 
rushes. A last lingering look at the great oblong 
shaft shows the inscriptions literally written in blood ; 
the sun, who loved Usertesen, floods the names and 
titles of the Lord of Diadems, son of the sun, with 
a glory of color, which the darkness will extinguish, 
and keeps bright the granite emblem of its rays, until 
we are far on our home-coming through the now 
scarcely visible field-paths. 

Near the villages the cattle are slowly moving 
homeward ; the frogs croak, and the mist of the 
evening rises silently and mysteriously, magnifying 
the camels in the high-road, and the tall palms are 
caught up in it and appear in the clouds. The 
donkeys pick their way as best they can across the 
grain-fields, stretching away out, as though forever 
and forever before us ; and the lightning flash of their 
silver-plated shoes, which show at the various jumps, 
tell us how quickly the little animals are hastening to 
their supper of sweet clover at Medinet. 

A little later we come to Crocodilopolis, where the 
foxes are supposed to prowl. Certainly it is grew- 
some ; in the almost darkness we do not meet a 
creature, but, tightening up the girths, give loose 
reins to the donkeys, and excepting sharp descents 
on each side, can chronicle no narrow escapes in 
this unadventurous record. 



84 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

All the country seems half a dream, and the more 
enchanting for the absence of sunlight. Even the 
hated hotel looks cleaner and nicer than ever; I 
don't know why, unless it is that we have become 
familiar with it; and, as some one has well said, " the 
instinctive desire for home, good or bad, definite or 
provisionary, commands you to love the spot you 
have known before." 



A DAY'S EXCURSION TO HAWARA. 

r I ^HE donkey-boys, Seyd and Ayed, at seven in 
-*■ the morning were already waiting under the 
locust-trees of the Fayum Inn, while the two beasts 
looked slick and span from the good results of the 
extra clover we had pleaded for them the night before. 
The native postmaster, feeling his superiority over 
the other officials, from the letter of introduction 
which he kept folded inside his turban, called to see 
us off; and one might suppose that an extraordinary 
event was preparing, from the loungers in the street, 
and the onlookers of the shops who had left their 
yellow and green merchandise to learn the strange 
secret of our expedition 

Very much flattered by the excitement we occa- 
sioned, and dispensing with the self-effacing tourist 
belongings, we confided the green umbrellas to bal- 
ance the basket of ginger ale on Achmet's donkey, 
and started off in high spirits ; especially as the 
pretty Fayum lunch-basket contained two small 
chickens, some fresh Yoosuf Effendis, and boiled eggs, 



86 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

positively proof against the bad cookery of any 
nation. 

The native soldier detailed to accompany the expe- 
dition looked very ornamental in blue uniform with 
gold stars and silver crescents; and his bright new 
English saddle, hung on a small and tawny Arabian 
horse, caused no small part of the general business 
stagnation in Medinet-el-Fayum. 

The escort, although not in the least necessary, 
gave a sort of cachet to the procession, and finally 
deprived us of at least one Eastern illusion by prov- 
ing unmistakably that the Arab is a very poor horse- 
man, not in the least graceful, and accomplished only 
in the art of staying on. 

The party moved down beside the canal, and we 
came unexpectedly on a very pretentious hotel, built 
ostensibly for future tourists who may elect to pry 
into the beautiful scenery of the Fayum and witness 
this living page of Genesis, when it can be seconded 
by the invasion of gas and gastronomy. All along 
the road lay through fertile fields, where the streams 
of Yusuf Effendi's canal creep or scarcely move at all 
between the banks of fine blue flowers, the mysotis 
of Egypt, most splendidly tinted, which fall from the 
bank above. 

The extraordinary fertility of this part of Egypt 
surpasses everything one can imagine. The clover, 
for example, is cut three times a year, and reaches 




A MEDINET BEAUTY. 



A DAY'S EXCURSION TO HAWARA. 87 

a height unknown in the most prolific countries. 
Scarcely has the grain been harvested when the point 
of the plough returns to the soil to prepare a new 
sowing. The earth, moistened by constant irrigation, 
becomes so softened that the mere scratch of a match 
serves to rend it ; and the instrument for the work is 
little more than a pointed piece of wood, drawn by a 
camel or an ass, for the buffalo is too valuable for 
sakiehs and wells to work the plough. All the fruit- 
trees and even the olives of Asia were growing in this 
perfectly new and enchanting landscape and on this 
first day of March. It was the season of the yellow 
mustard flowers, — if anything can be said to have a 
season where vegetation ignores every natural law. 
The flowers invade the moist spots, and drink up the 
sweet waters wherever it is the will of the Nile to give 
it ; and a flower drift of blossoms is sailing away on 
the edge of every wind-swept stream. Still five miles 
from the Hawara pyramid, one can catch the odor 
of black coffee and see signs of activity in the tiny 
native houses as we brush along their walls, and in the 
greenest of pastures, while work of the type under- 
taken by the Fellahin Ceres in slavery was going 
on vigorously in the wheat-fields about the mud 
villages, otherwise drowsily uninteresting. It was 
churning-day, and at the sun-baked side of every 
russet hut a lean woman's figure sat apart on the 
ground, swinging mechanically to and fro the black 



88 



IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 



hide of a goat, tied by his four legs to a rope sus- 
pended from the low-browed dwelling, holding the 
buffalo milk which in about forty minutes becomes 
the oily butter the natives delight in. 

Close to the edge of the desert, there is a shallow 
stream to be forded. Our donkeys at first refuse and 
draw back ; once safe on the other side, we look back 




A FELLAH BOY. 



at our imposing escort, whose steed had developed 
an unconquerable dislike to going through the water. 
I remember the donkey-boy's laughter as the Arab 
grew more nervous and the horse more stubbornly 
determined to have his own way, turning about 
abruptly at the water's edge every time his rider 
approached it, and refusing to be spurred on a step 



A DAY'S EXCURSION TO HAWARA. 89 

farther. My last sight of the ridiculous spectacle 
was a view of scrupulously white trousers wading 
knee-deep in the stream, pulling the horse across by 
his bridle, — a disgrace to the name cavalryman ; and 
I had ample time to smother my laughter before the 
quick hoof-beats of his steed sounded on the sand, 
for we were now far out on the hard and glittering 
desert girdle of the Fayum, on the very bed of 
apocalyptic Mceris, and before us was the pyramid 
of Hawara, broken brown and gold under the blaze 
of noon. 

The present and past generation of theories con- 
cerning Lake Mceris agree in several particulars at 
least : the lake was in the Fayum province, the 
Labyrinth and Pyramid of Hawara occupied places 
alongside its border, and the purposes it was supposed 
to accomplish were to " receive part of the Nile water 
when the river was in flood, to moderate its excesses 
and return the stored up water to the Nile when its 
discharges had fallen low in summer, and supplement 
its deficiencies ; " so says a recent engineering work 
in regard to this subject. Not being an engineer, and 
having a woman's conservative delight in remotest tra- 
dition, I will give the Arab legend of the origin of the 
ever mysterious Mceris, feeling that it has as much 
claim to credence as the story related by Herodotus, 
who, supposing the whole oasis artificially excavated, 
naturally asked what had been done with the earth 



90 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

dug from such a tremendous pit, and was glibly 
answered by the ingenious Egyptian that " it was all 
carried to the Nile and floated away ; " the distance 
to the Nile being thirty-one miles, and the earth com- 
puted at fifty billion cubic metres, it would seem as 
if there were really giants in those days. The Arab 
romance translated by an American enthusiast is 
somewhat as follows : — 

Now it appears that Joseph, to whom may Allah 
show mercy and peace, when he was first gentleman 
of the star chamber and in high esteem with Raiwan, 
his Sovereign, after spending his seventy years in this 
high service, became, as it is the fate of High Chan- 
cellors in our own time, an object of jealous envy to 
the highest lights of the Court at Memphis. These, 
however, ignored the Egyptian Reichstag, and sounded 
the King himself. " Has not Joseph's knowledge of 
war policy and social agitations faded with his beauty, 
and do gray hairs go with sagacity?" And the 
mighty Ruler said unto them : " Set him a task which 
shall serve as a test." At that time the Fayum was 
called El Hun, or the Marsh, and served as a waste 
basin for the water of Upper Egypt, which flowed in 
and out unrestrained ; and after much consulting to- 
gether, the courtiers gave reply to Pharaoh : " Lay 
the royal commands upon Joseph that he shall divert 
the water of the Nile from El Hun and drain it, so as 
to give you a new province and an additional source 



A DAY'S EXCURSION TO HAWARA. 91 

of revenue." The king joyfully assented, and hit 
upon a plan to portion his daughter without calling 
on the exasperated Centre, whose patience as well as 
palaces were no doubt well-nigh exhausted from the 
frequent pauper princes who had married royal wives. 
"Joseph," said he, "I have no estate for my young- 
est well-beloved daughter, and, the time having 
arrived for her dot, I would greatly love to have the 
submerged land of El Hun to serve my royal pur- 
pose. It is surrounded by desert, and convenient to 
the capital; my daughter will thus be independent 
and protected." " True," responded Joseph ; " it 
shall be done when you wish it, by the aid of Allah." 
"The sooner the better," said Pharaoh ; and workmen 
having been collected, three great canals were dug, 
and the water drained. Then the tamarisks and 
bushes were cut away, so that when the Nile rose and 
entered the Bahr Yusuf, it flowed to the Fayum, 
creating the land which gave birth to the luxurious 
rose-gardens of half a century ago. The result was 
pleasing to Rainan, and he said : " How long did it 
take you to make this wilderness to blossom?" 
" Seventy days," was the answer. Then Pharaoh 
turned to his disconcerted courtiers, and said : 
" Apparently one could not have done it in a thou- 
sand days." So was the name changed from El 
Hun (the Marsh) to El Fayum (the Land of a Thou- 
sand Days), although the cause of its christening 



92 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

should be cautiously inquired into, since it cannot 
stand any " higher criticism." 

We are now cantering past the same sort of low 
bushes and tamarisk patches which confronted 
Joseph before the water came which a modern 
Joseph would now restore. We watch the some- 
what ragged Bedouins encamped on the plain, — 
squatters we would call them, — and wonder what the 
flocks are fed on, as no pasture-land is in sight. I 
ask the dragoman, who had not communicated a 
single fact since early in the day, when he explained 
some whitewashed shrines on the roadside. " Look, 
the tombs by the Arabs," which meagre bit of in- 
formation imparted slight interest to them. In this 
case no answer was forthcoming ; but somewhere I 
have read that the accommodating camels can live 
seventeen days without food and twenty-four without 
water, only betraying their unfed condition by occa- 
sional and very human signs of bad temper when in 
a state of hunger. 

We reach Hawara enthusiastic and happy, and at 
once climb the soft and crumbling pyramid. Until 
Flinders Petrie came, nothing was known about its 
builders, arrangement, or date ; debris had fallen and 
rubbish accumulated over its secret entrances and 
exits, until the determined explorer built a palm- 
thatched hut for himself on the sun-colored soil, 
cleared and tunnelled away the brick, and making an 



A DAY'S EXCURSION TO HAWARA. 93 

inspired guess, finally reached the original trap-door 
passage to the inner chamber, finding there the 
richest prizes of the twelfth dynasty ; the amulets of 
a noble of the twenty-sixth ; and the Roman portrait- 
panels, whose extraordinarily vivid colors are like 
those of a newly replenished palette, and so well 
done that one can never believe or understand that 
they were the work of a mere country painter of a pro- 
vincial village ; and then the clumsy rag dolls which 
had been put to sleep with the little Roman babies 
in the great secret chamber, and the flowers, the 
wreath of dried sweet flowers, which had adorned the 
ancient dames, and show what a florist could do then 
as now, — all these the learned Petrie brought to 
nineteenth-century daylight, and many other things 
which the wise men have brought to England. 

Many stories are told of the self-denying desert life 
of this antiquarian anchorite, who was not, however, 
proof against temptations of the gastronomic order. 
I especially liked to hear of the semi-barbarous 
genius who presided over the cuisine during 
the digging. And I remember the story of an 
improvised menu, and especially a new plat, which, 
if imitation is the sincerest flattery, might well 
cause conceit to its inventor. It was a very available 
dish, — several eggs, first shaken together in a bottle, 
treated to buffalo milk and butter, then scrambled on 
a tin sheet over an alcohol lamp, a la Petrie, to whom 



94 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

necessity confided the receipt; and its very simplicity 
enabled us to face every luncheon possibility of 
future expeditions with perfect serenity. 

The lurking savages of the Bedouin encampment 
gathered in from their brown tents, and I proposed 
they should go and dig up something, Philistine 
enough to covet some beads or mummy wrappings. 
At the rate of four piastres a day, the tariff of 
Brugsch Bey, they began delightedly; and a few 
minutes of literal handiwork resulted in scrubbing 
out a shrunken mummy hand and a yellow skull 
with dangling black hair, just a little way from our 
lunching-place. This was too much, and we begged 
them to stop. It was scarcely cheering, a much too 
severe test for amateur body-snatchers unfortified by 
sufficient food. However, the digging went steadily 
forward until the whole flock had grubbed up enough 
curios for a museum, whose authenticity, moreover, 
was not to be gainsaid. 

Although the pyramid is the main object at 
Hawara, it is a lesser light to my mind than the 
Labyrinth, whose existence had been so faithfully 
backed up by Herodotus. On the south stretches a 
wide mass of chips and fragments, associated with 
and once making part and parcel of this gigantic 
building ; for these mouldering fragments are con- 
sidered to be the remains of the labyrinthine wonder 
which the Greeks strangely passed over in their 



A DAY'S EXCURSION TO HAWARA. 95 

enumeration of the seven marvels of the world, whose 
foundation stones laid so heavily on my childish 
brain, in the rigmarole so rigidly learned at school, 
of which only the pyramids remain in evidence. In 
a few minutes we had extracted every drop of infor- 
mation contained in Baedeker, and were prowling 
around among those uninteresting chips of broken 
pottery; for the stone structure of the Labyrinth is 
only a crypt for the ruins of a town of brick build- 
ings built on its site. According to the comparisons 
of guide-book phraseology, the whole Labyrinth must 
have been in the shape of a horse-shoe, but so vast 
that all the buildings at Memphis, and the great 
pyramids themselves, could be contained in its great 
area. 

Imbued with a reckless spirit, and overcoming the 
inclination to bask lazily in the sunshine, we poked 
about with umbrellas and crept into the low excava- 
tions ; but some fragment of capitals in the red stone 
of Assuan or limestone blocks were the rare and 
unsensational reward of various trips and falls among 
the ruins. Of the great single blocks which often 
formed the ceiling or the floor of the chambers there 
was nothing to be seen. The old king, we are told, 
used for the Labyrinth only the granite of the As- 
suan Hills. Not an inch of despised wood or other 
material formed these winding halls, with illusive 
passages running through them, which had a decided 



96 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

family likeness to the modern maze, but of such solid 
strength that, like the wonderful " one-horse shay," 
they were warranted not to wear out. Nevertheless 
a small town of masons once existed here for the pro- 
nounced purpose of their destruction ; and these 
moderns, or rather Romans, by a characteristic trick 
have quarried and mined this immense edifice until 
not one stone remains on another of those massive 
works of the ancient artisans. No doubt their indig- 
nant ghosts walk by night. The pyramid of burnt 
Nile bricks at the end of the Labyrinth is the tomb of 
the former occupant of this vast palace, which con- 
sisted of as many royal dwellings as there were mag- 
nates, representing different nomes, who assembled 
there in council in serious times to offer gifts and de- 
liberate on affairs of state. Imagination is so power- 
ful, femininely speaking, that we just feasted our eyes 
on the unbroken sea of red pottery fragments as 
though they were the superb achievement of Isman- 
des himself in all its enormity of enterprise ; and feel- 
ing that everything had been properly appreciated, 
we departed amid a loud accompaniment of savage 
salaams, soon losing sight of Hawara, the Bedouins, 
and our mimic pyramid of apollinaris bottles lying in 
the cool shadows of its prototype. 

At daylight next day, the weather was all right and 
the sun was coming up soft and not too brightly over 
the palm-trees. Attractive as was the rhythmic name 



A DAY'S EXCURSION TO HAWARA. 97 

of Berket-el-Kurun, or Lake of the Horns, it would 
be an adventurous traveller indeed who would risk a 
sun-stroke on the borders of its green waters, when 
the proper conditions for such a catastrophe were 
apparent from the singeing aspect of the coppery- 
sun itself. 

A train leaves Medinet once a day for Abuska, 
bordering on the salt marshes, and stops anywhere 
you wish as obligingly as a hansom cab. Halts are 
made frequently, — at various mud-granaries, for in- 
stance; occasionally we are held up by friendly Arabs 
who board the train, or we jump down and pick 
flowers, or a sportsman sees some game ; any or all 
of these things will serve as an excuse for stopping. 
But at last we come slowly on Abuska. There is no 
pretence for a station as yet, but one day it will be 
there, — flying red awnings and busy book-stalls. 
The outlines of the lake are inconspicuous in the blue 
distance; and as we brush back the thick growth 
from the debris of an old sugar-cane factory, from 
our perch among the rusty boilers we discover a 
pretentious two-story plaster house with a balcony 
in contradistinction to the regular Abuska mud 
dwellings. The director of the railway lives there, 
no doubt, and for the sake of a good view we are 
soon walking uninvited into the ghost of a sun- 
withered garden. We taught the dragoman a little 
speech, and sent him in to ask permission to view 

7 



98 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

the lake from the house. A moment later he beamed 
upon us with a satisfied expression, and the infor- 
mation that the sister " by him speak Turkish." I 
wonder if we have impressed Achmet all this time 
as Turkish ladies? The characteristic national cos- 
tume soon appeared, and a wistful face with pathetic 
black eyes made up for feminine shortcomings in 
way of red and white paint on cheeks and lips of the 
" sister." We all went up on the high veranda, and 
then came coffee and cigarettes, which latter were 
indulged in by the director, as he smiled compliments 
and talked broken French, while he fingered his 
Moslem rosary. 

The Libyan hills are pink and lemon over the violet 
water, and pelicans fly across its sunset colors. All 
around are sterile banks of mud and sand ; and the 
fishermen, in curious boats without deck or mast, 
stand on the flooring of the stern, while others are 
rowing against the wind, for the fish always swim 
in the same direction. The landing-place, Khashm 
Kahil, springing up from a great growth of tamarinds 
and reedy bushes, stands out on a slight promontory ; 
and the sportsmen who alone have known of the 
loveliness of the lake have never revealed its beauties, 
for the tourist's advent would soon spoil the richest 
game country in the world. Wild geese, gray peli- 
cans, and pink flamingoes swarm to the " nourishing 
ooze," and a hundred wild fowl, whose names I do 



A DAY'S EXCURSION TO HAWARA. 99 

not even know, flock about the lake banks. On the 
other side big game and savage lurk in the desolate 
cactus hedges and deserted temples under the Libyan 
mountains ; and this is not a mere traveller's tale, 
although I have carried away many that are. 

The young moon shone on us, and a great fanfan 
of musical instruments greeted our return to Medinet. 
It was the Melah, and that evening we all went to a 
native circus. There was the usual great tent, and 
two chairs were placed for us below the rows of 
bearded Turks, — " Conscript Fathers," in classic 
black gowns, who squatted in solemn ranks along the 
tiers of plank seats, as if ready to pronounce sen- 
tence. The situation really recalled a Roman arena; 
only there was no victim, excepting a nervous camel 
trained to walk a tight rope. It was past ten o'clock, 
and the circus had only just commenced. 

The absence of tawdry lace and tinsel, of hydra- 
headed phenomena and freshly arrived Italian eques- 
triennes, made the scene unfamiliar; but the fine Arab 
athletes were as barbarian as one could desire, and 
the Egyptian clown, colorless as white paint could 
make him, was unusually funny without understand- 
ing a word of the nonsensical rigmarole he uttered, 
which, however, did not dispose the Turks to laugh. 

We soon left, and wandered through half-lit bazaars. 
In a cramped corner a group of white-bearded muftis 
chanted the orisons of Saint Roube, whose birthday 



IOO IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

gave us the Melah; and all squatting on the dark 
ground, swaying to and fro, the light of a single lan- 
tern hardly prevented our stumbling over them at 
their devotions; while outside the evening waxed 
gay, and the music grew louder from little half-dim 
dens on all sides, for " when the sun sinks, all Africa 
dances." 



THE CAIRO OF THE MOSLEMS. 

WE went yesterday to see the University of El 
Azhar, which means the " flowery," the great- 
est centre of Mohammedan learning in the world. 
The Mohammedans no longer have any spirit, or show 
any bigotry when the guides take you to see their 
religious institutions. They have even made the 
way easy by distributing tickets among the hotels, 
which may be obtained of the porter at two piastres 
a mosque. These are collected by the custodian 
priest at the entrance gateway, but that does not 
prevent him from announcing frankly that a fee is 
expected ; and one is generally acquiescent, well 
knowing the demand is simple extortion, but to be 
humble and submissive under beggars tends to 
render travelling anywhere easy and endurable. 

Everything about the mosque of El Azhar is 
remarkable. The very entrance is through a street 
of the Middle Ages, winding between irregular and 
picturesque groups of houses, with charming origi- 
nality of outline, and bright strings of chillies festooned 
over the gateways to ripen in the air. It is by the 
great west door of the mosque that one enters the 



102 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

long outer corridor which serves as a gathering-place 
for dealers of all kinds, selling their vegetables or 
clover; and just outside, in the muddy lanes, are the 
little dim holes where all the articles which the stu- 
dents may need are made before their very eyes. 

The finest cloth fabrics alternate with baked bread 
and fruits in vinegar. The students pass their time 
when not in the mosque at the neighboring book- 
seller's, or barber's, or are snatching a hurried meal 
from the simmering contents of a brass pot; and you 
will find the quarter of the University the busiest 
corner of Cairo, — a great Noah's ark of trade, which 
combines profit and religion under the shadow of the 
flowery mosque. 

At the outer door of the court, we step on holy 
ground over a low barrier which divides it from the 
much cleaner, but more unhallowed world about it; 
and regarded merely from an artistic standpoint, the 
first view of the whitewashed walls is disappointing. 
I recommend its charms only to the antiquarian gor- 
mands, — for it is here you can feast on origines of 
Islamism ; or if you can love and venerate a stray bit 
of debris from Mediaeval Ages, these walls have pre- 
served it pure since the month of Gemasi in the year 
of the Hegira 359, when they were founded by the 
Fatimite general, Gohar. We are visiting a uni- 
versity without an endowment, where thousands of 
students have no dormitory but the mosque, sleeping 



THE CAIRO OF THE MOSLEMS. 103 

extended on the pavement of the great court in their 
light cotton gowns, where no fees are paid for board 
or tuition, and where the simple meals are eaten in the 
open colonnades, while the sparrows fly down and pick 
up the crumbs. Although unable to explain this 
curious restraint, coffee and tobacco are strictly denied 
the students, who dine in the commons of the mosque. 
College lodgings are unnecessary, for the walls are 
lined, where the doors and windows allow, with rough 
cases resembling packing-boxes, which contain the 
students' wardrobes; and their diminutive size would 
indicate one drawback to the extravagances of west- 
ern college boys. No terms are catalogued, to be 
well considered before the luxury of learning is pos- 
sible. The Administration of the Wakfs, which has 
charge of all mosques and other religious institutions, 
makes no demands for fees, but on the contrary sus- 
tains the scholars and furnishes them with provisions. 
To do this, they divide the students into riwaks, 
or quarters, corresponding to the different countries 
represented. It is these riwaks which constitute the 
mediaeval peculiarity of the place. You involunta- 
rily think of the old custom of separating foreign 
students, which survives in the "Latin Quarter" in 
Paris, and remember this geographical arrangement 
is only half forgotten in Germany even now. Each 
riwak of El Azhar has a sheik, who is the head 
of the company of boys under his command ; and 



104 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

over all there is the great Sheik of the university, 
— the President, as it were, of this Oriental faculty, 
who is the wiseacre of Egypt, an Oriental Pope in 
Arab domain, who speaks ex cathedra on all religious 
questions, sits in the chair of Mohammed in the St. 
Peter's of Mohammedanism, and is the head of a 
great university, where the learning, though limited 
and insufficient, is in focus. At least, they have their 
dogmas better in hand than the followers of Hegel 
and Schopenhauer, pulling at the bit, and reining up 
no one knows where ; here the creed is simple enough : 
" La ilaha ill' Allah." 

More than seven thousand students attend the 
classes ; Turks, Nubians from the bookless wilds 
of Africa, Kurds, natives of India and the holy cities 
of Mecca and Medina, make the most interesting 
groups about each white pillar, where a professor 
is expounding the Koran, commenting on each word 
separately, and treating the interruptions in the way 
of questions with great patience. 

At the base of these columns, which make a marble 
forest of the court, a circle of students are ranged, 
seated in the Arab manner with crossed legs, or 
crouching on the palm-matted floor. The learners 
are of all ages and all colors ; some are sleeping, 
some knitting, while others follow attentively the dis- 
course of the teacher, and the number is more or less 
large according to his reputation. Many are old 



THE CAIRO OF THE MOSLEMS. 105 

men, for it is really an agreeable place of sojourn, 
this free and liberal college; and it must require a 
certain amount of courage to leave it; besides, it has 
the honor to remain the one famous seat of wisdom 
in the Mohammedan world. 

The Arabs taught geometry about four hundred 
years ago in their university ; then they found the 
Koran contained everything necessary to know, and 
here this very reminiscent theology is taught even 
the smallest children from seven years old, — girls 
being admitted to study with their brothers up to the 
age of ten years. Though some of the little girls are 
blind, they seem as patient " a range of pupils " as 
the noble ladies of the Princess Ida. Like them, 
they press in from the provinces to attain the know- 
ledge which will result in that uplift of their natures, 

" Until the habits of the slave, 
The sins of emptiness, gossip, and spite 
And slander, die." 

As a reward for the draught at the unsealed fountain 
of knowledge, the little Academicians are afterwards 
permitted to recite the Koran at funerals, a singular 
compensation, and I doubt if they are consulted. 

The shortest and easiest chapters of the Koran are 
the last in the book; and beginning at the end, the 
children learn to read, to copy, and to recite it by 
heart, — a real tour de force ; but as everything de- 
pends on memory in a Mohammedan education, it is 



106 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

like the training for the trapeze, — you cannot begin 
too young to limber up. 

According to the fashion of the country, a rocking 
motion is constantly kept up by the whole school, — a 
shaking to and fro, which we are told is meant to 
keep them from falling asleep. A master in a black 
gown is engaged in imparting a rudimentary know- 
ledge of the Arab parts of speech to his small audi- 
ence, who, attentive and quiet, unlike other chil- 
dren, do not seem at all conscious of our presence. 
A couple of rods, with their ends well sharpened, 
look very much out of place here where the saying, 
" Boys will be boys," is untrue. 

The children are striving to understand that the 
noun in Arabic <4 declines according to its case," 
and that " all nouns, verbs, and participles are vari- 
able." Other teachers are seated on the uneven pave- 
ment in like manner, for desks are unknown. A 
primitive tin slate and quill serves for the writing- 
lesson ; and only the larger boys are recruited for 
this branch, for their extraordinary language is, as 
every one knows, as difficult to write as to read, — a 
sort of short-hand, with the vowels left out, and read 
from right to left. 

Our companion, a Coptic gentleman, who studied 
at Oxford, tells us the instruction at the older 
Moslem university is, strangely enough, almost con- 
fined to the exegesis of the Koran, the interpreta- 



THE CAIRO OF THE MOSLEMS. 107 

tions, and the traditions; that the sciences are 
unknown, the Mohammedans, with few exceptions, 
believing that the earth is perfectly flat, that Egypt 
is the mother of the world, and the sun is held in the 
sky by a great dragon. The importance of the tradi- 
tions, called in Arabic " hadith," is easily accounted 
for by the treatise of an Arabian savant, containing 
four thousand different ones; while another compila- 
tion consists of more than seven thousand, which are 
transmitted from doctor to priest with minute exact- 
ness, each teacher possessing a number in his mem- 
ory. These traditions and dogmas date back in a 
genealogical succession to the disciples of Moham- 
med ; and from that remote day to this, not a 
shadow of doubt has been brought to bear upon 
their well-worn phrases. It is impossible to visit a 
college where the students are more occupied with 
the ambition to become learned ; a singular example 
of this exists in the conference held by scholars after 
the lesson, when the most clever among a few inti- 
mate friends explains to the dullards the difficult 
points of the study they have undertaken. It 
happens sometimes in the mimic school that the 
teacher finds his vocation, the conference decides 
his whole existence, and is the point of departure for 
a brilliant life. The wise and gentle Amiel says : 
" It is by teaching, that we teach ourselves ; by relat- 
ing, that we observe; by affirming, that we examine ; 



108 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

by showing, that we look ; by writing, that we think ; 
and by pumping water, that we drain water into the 
well." 

Nothing succeeds like success. Soon the young 
savant, in his turn, seats himself under a column; and 
as unquestioned liberty is allowed to follow a purely 
elective course of study, the new master, if he has 
esprit and talents, attracts quite a circle of auditors. 
Then comes the test of wisdom, in the visit of the 
thirty-one dread sheiks of the college. The faculty 
proceed to a rigid examination of the aspirant, mak- 
ing an inquisitorial demand on his knowledge of the 
law and the doctrine, until he either comes forth 
anathema, and even his disciples mock him, or vic- 
torious, and worthy to sit in the seat of the professors, 
a ready-made sheik of El Azhar. 

It is a well-established custom in Cairo that, at 
every stopping-place, the horses are relieved of their 
bridles and allowed to munch numberless meals of 
clover; waiting for this proceeding to be concluded, 
we had plenty of time to hold a short conversation 
through the guide with a small girl student, who, 
from curiosity, had left her lessons and followed us to 
the street, holding a tin slate covered with beautiful 
Arabic texts which she had just written. A small 
coin smoothed the way to its possession, but unfortu- 
nately the more bigoted boys had sighted this awful 
wickedness, — the sale of the holy writing to an 



THE CAIRO OF THE MOSLEMS. 109 

unbeliever, — and came screaming up to the car- 
riage holding up wet sponges in each dingy hand. 
Finding the lady obdurate, a war of words followed, 
which ended only when, the driver lashing his 
horses, we started forward and dashed down the 
street, clutching the slate high in air, the little bigots 
still shouting and clinging to the steps, finally suc- 
ceeding in effacing the writing, leaving only black 
and soapy sponge-sweeps over the now worthless 
piece of tin ; but the little Eve kept her piastre, and 
looked on, placidly smiling a sweet salaam as we 
disappeared. 

A portion of almost every day we spent wandering 
in and out of a part of the four hundred mosques of 
Cairo. They take up a great space in every street ; 
their domes and minarets combine with other grace- 
ful forms to make a part of every picture. Still they 
all are very nearly alike, new and old tinted gray or 
maize, the Egyptian color of mourning, and all have 
fallen into a picturesque decay. The interiors are 
generally sown with rugs, and are simple and quiet, 
with no ornaments except the rich carvings of the 
Koran inscriptions, and the intricate arabesques of 
red and gold paint. Near the noisy bazaar of the 
copper-smiths, and close by the ruins of Es-Salah, 
which fell a few years ago, is the superb old Muristan 
of Kalaun, with its beautiful bronze gates. The 
floor of the entire mosque is inlaid in colored marble, 



HO IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

a linking pattern of keys spread over its walls, and 
the Kibla, or niche which looks towards Mecca, adds 
an aimless design of exquisite pearl-work, the model 
of Hatoon's workmen in the Mousky. In the centre, 
four old Byzantine columns support the central 
dome, and the corridors are vaulted in a Gothic 
design. A doorway leads to the tomb of the Sultan 
Kalaun, which is now an office for the Wakf adminis- 
trators, who, since they cannot sell the church prop- 
erties, but may exchange them, allow the mosques to 
fall into decay and ruin. Once the Muristan con- 
tained a separate ward for every known disease; and 
connected with it was a dispensary and lecture-room 
for students, — a sort of clinic ; and everything was 
free, and the poor and rich fared alike. A sick man 
lies rolled in a black heap; he has crawled in from 
the world outside, and lies unmolested on a frayed rug 
in the cool shadows of the pillars. The hospital has 
disappeared, but the columns possess a miraculous 
power over disease ; and they are always sticky from 
the limes rubbed over the worn surface, polished like 
glass by constant rubbing. The lime after touching 
the pillar is placed to the lips, and instead of heal- 
ing, might often become a means of contracting a 
disease. 

The guide thinks a surer way is to lick the stone 
itself, and shows how it is done. There is only a 
crumbling wall between us and a shouting, yelling, 



THE CAIRO OF THE MOSLEMS. Ill 

pushing public. You can hear the rush and roar out- 
side, the shrill cries of pedlers, and the hammering 
of the copper-smiths ; but the approaches to the 
mosque are by a courtyard, and the crowd cannot 
enter except in this way to disturb the worship 
within. 

A second great building, the fourteenth-century 
mosque of Barkuk, stands opposite, with a graceful 
minaret and some lovely traceried windows. A great 
bronze door leads into the bright marble-paved ves- 
tibule and vaulted passage. The door itself is gigan- 
tic for the proportions of the building, but the 
knocker rises more than twelve feet above the floor. 
The guide cleared up the mystery to his own satisfac- 
tion by saying that in Adam's time men were taller 
than now; and the dust of centuries, which has col- 
lected about the half-ruined arches, would seem to 
indicate an almost prehistoric foundation. 

In the centre of the court is the Meda, or Hana- 
fiyeh, where the faithful bathe before prayer; the 
drinking fountain has an unclean and unsanitary 
look. 

We pass under a doorway into a sort of chapel 
shrine ; it is the tomb of Sultan Barkuk's daughter. 
The place is almost inaccessible, from rubbish ; great 
pieces of colored marble are falling off in places, and 
cracks admit the daylight and the noise together. 
But it is thoroughly Cairene and Oriental, and, like 



112 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

everything else in Egypt, picturesque. Going out, 
an inscription in rich gilt breaks the general gloom 
of the place. We ask the guide what it all means ; 
but he shakes his head, the shrewd fellow, and hides 
his neglected education by saying that it would be a 
sin for a Mussulman to repeat any verse from the 
Koran to a Christian. I intend to write nothing 
about the splendors of the mosque El Ghure, whose 
beautiful entrance is one of the best remaining in 
Cairo, or the little Abu-Berk-ibn-mizheh near the 
blind school, and a dozen more. There is noth- 
ing to tell that the guide-books would not make 
plainer, and I can only break my determination for 
Mohammed Ali, the Mosque of the Citadel, and 
for the sake of its great dome. This building, 
for which no one has a good word to say, is built 
on the plan of St. Sophia at Constantinople, with 
lemon-colored blocks of alabaster incrusted in its 
masonry, and in the sunshine it seems a great bright 
mountain. You can overlook the ball-room effect 
produced by the gay ornaments and red and gold 
decorations, and forgive the operatic glitter of globes, 
each with its candle, which rain down in circles from 
the high ceiling, and tinkle when the wind blows 
from the open door first high and clear, and then 
dying away softly. All this is in the worst possible 
taste for a basilica, which it so nearly resembles; 
but the great dome is so vast and uplifting that you 



THE CAIRO OF THE MOSLEMS. 113 

scarcely notice the gaudy modern rugs which carpet 
this mosque seven deep, or remember the unattuned 
pavilion in Chinese pattern in the court, or the incon- 
gruous French clock presented by Louis Philippe. 
The citadel built round its base is a huge stone mass 
reared by Saladin, in 1166, from the pyramid quar- 
ries at Gizeh. It has all the quaintness and mediaeval 
spirit about it which the alabaster mosque cannot 
claim. Old and shrunken and lustreless, it seems 
even plainer and more gloomy as you leave the 
gorgeous modern mosque, and pass through the 
winding and crooked lanes cut in the rock itself and 
into the inner gate of the fortress, on the hill which 
was chosen, according to tradition, from the fact that 
provisions would last here twice as long as in any 
other place in Cairo. 

From the wall of the citadel we look down on the 
gray and white town below us, and away to the vivid 
green of fertile land, watered by the Nile, which 
borders the yellow desert and the distant pyramids. 

This view of Cairo is certainly one of the most 
interesting in the world. The fortress is now the 
barracks of British soldiers; the Black Watch of 
Edinburgh is quartered there, and the owners of plaid 
tartans are as thick as a Scotch mist on the over- 
hanging balconies. Driving away from the citadel, 
we pass a ruin called the new mosque, now aban- 
doned, it is said, for the sole benefit of the army of 



114 /A 7 CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

occupation, because, if built, it would destroy the 
range of English guns, when firing from the for- 
tress into the city in case of any little insubordina- 
tion among the Egyptians. Most Europeans wrongly 
suppose the English are there to protect the Khe- 
dive's authority, and that his people are the rightful 
owners of the land. 




A SCHOOL NEAR THE MOSQUE. 



A SHEIK'S HOUSE. 

TT is not a difficult thing to accomplish the renas- 
-*■ cence of the personages of the Mamelukes. 
Here are their palaces, where so many tragic dramas 
were unfolded, and the narrow streets, curving and 
overhung with balconies of carved wood, which re- 
main perfect pictures of mediaeval grace and beauty. 
The doorways, leading through thick stone walls of 
this old quarter, are scrolled and twisted with ara- 
besque fret-work ; garden glimpses of terraces and 
fruit blossoms rise beyond the stone steps, and a 
Lazarus is always at the gate. 

The dust need not be shaken off the history of 
four hundred years ago in Egypt. The scenic 
effects of that time have hardly changed ; and even 
the decorations of the tombs, fresh with warm colors, 
evoke the images of the men who sleep, and rekindle 
their deeds. The exquisite and imaginative mosques 
which extend far along the east side of Cairo are 
known as the tombs of the Mamelukes. Nothing 
could be imagined more delicately beautiful, more 
fantastic and graceful. One is filled with wonder at 
the infinite variety of the minarets, the brilliant con- 
fusion of colorings, the fretted windows, and faded, 



Il6 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

incrusted woodwork of the interiors, whose interlac- 
ing stones are brightened by softened rays from 
jewelled windows. 

In front of us, from the windmill hill, rises the 
mosque tomb of Sultan Barkuk, not big or gloomy, 
but smiling and sparkling with two flower-like domes 
rising impartially over the tombs of the male and 
female portions of the family in a way which a 
woman suffragist might approve. At sunset, the 
rays inundate the minarets and cupolas with rose and 
gold reflections. The gray and pink cube of granite 
which is the mosque of Kait Bey takes the flame 
colors which flood the mountain background; and, 
viewed from the hill, the details of plaster lace-work, 
bronze and marble decorations turn all violet; the 
blue Nile flecked with white sails loses itself in the 
distant trees of Shubra, while the tones of the desert, 
sweeping up to meet the glow of sunset, seem a 
fusion of molten glass. 

The old quarter of the Mamelukes lies close 
behind the Mousky; and when you have passed 
under the gateway, remember you have gone back- 
wards four hundred years, into the gray past of pal- 
aces now crumbling, pallid, and tottering on feeble 
foundations. 

The end of a block often closes the perspective in 
these militant and luckless streets, for the mediaeval 
gentlemen fought one another ad libitum behind 



A SHEIK'S HOUSE. 117 

their thick stone walls, and curved and twisted the 
approaches to them with a view to prevent the insur- 
gents massing their forces. There is hardly room 
for two carriages to pass, and all pedestrians are 
forced against the gray walls on either side. One 
can study the buildings conveniently only where they 
cut the sky-line, since the attitude of star-gazing 
alone brings in view their upper stories above the 
high walls. 

In the heart of the shadowy streets, sunk between 
strong walled houses and dying out in narrow lanes, 
choked with fallen and crumbling blocks of stone, 
you see the boundary lines of a palace, spreading 
around a great hollow square. 

A young Mohammedan, with full, calm face, 
almond-eyed us as we approached the wooden bench 
where he was seated, talking most familiarly with 
attendant Arabs. This personage in a sacred green 
turban of enormous dimensions towering above his 
copper-colored complexion represents the family of 
Mohammed, and is the Sheik Abdul Kareem Sadad, 
the greatest dignity of Moslem society, although he 
did not seem to take his vocation very seriously, or 
even to maintain the least appearance of saintly 
demeanor before his retainers, who, with the usual 
sprinkling of beggars, were smoking in a very demo- 
cratic manner, and the man who seemed most to 
enjoy the occasion was the wearer of the ermine- 



Il8 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

lined mantle, which opened to show a loose silk tunic 
flowing out over the board bench at the gateway. 

The remark has sometimes been made, that people 
all over the world of the same calling resemble one 
another. The head of Clan Mohammed would be 
recognized anywhere as an illustration of the com- 
fortable leisure class, accustomed to privileged saint- 
liness, and a dictatorship in ideas and customs. A 
visiting-card was handed to the young Sheik, who, 
knowing the name engraved on it, at once begged us 
to enter, and as we say Salamate, we leave him still 
puffing outside, like the heroes of the " Arabian 
Nights," while a servant is detailed to show the house. 
The truth in this case costs an immense moral effort; 
the renouncement of the Sheik's personal attentions 
to this part of the hospitality was most unflattering. 
It would have been such a pleasure and satisfaction 
to have accepted the services of the real son of the 
Prophet in introducing the ladies of the house. 
However, the occasion proved interesting enough. 
We followed the attendant through an arched gate- 
way, where he slipped off his yellow morocco slip- 
pers, and motioned us through the nearest door. A 
fantastic, but noble structure rose in the dry sunlight 
of the courtyard. The walls were gray and old, and 
in some places the mushrebiyeh screens had cracked 
off, and the harem apartment lay half open to view. 
The rents in walls and casements were places for 



A SHEIK'S HOUSE. 119 

sprays of grasses to hang from ; and out of the cen- 
tral court grew a splendid tree, as old as the house 
itself, — that is, four hundred years. 

The great court was quiet as the grave ; two low, 
unpainted benches with high arms were unoccupied, 
and showed signs of dissolution, like everything else. 
A balcony sprang out of the mud-covered walls, 
with bird-cage projections, carved in dice-like blocks 
and gray like the rest, a stone spectre of the Middle 
Ages itself. 

The bright, warm sun-rays shot into the blackness 
of a great empty room, as the inlaid door swung back ; 
and we felt as though we had been transported 
through the ivory gate by which all good dreams 
come. This beautiful apartment of state is a pea- 
cock room, and like nothing else but itself and the 
bird's plumage. Old Persian tiles of blue and green 
glaze line the side walls, meeting the beautiful ara- 
besque ceiling, which drops down at irregular places 
in a painted shower of spangled stars carved in 
wood. Where the tiles have fallen away, coarse 
pigments have carried out the effect in the same 
colors. Not a European shade or tone is anywhere 
to be seen. 

Niches hold pyramids of artificial flowers, dusty 
and unreal; and great glass chandeliers with green 
crystal tears swing from the starry canopy of the 
ceiling. 



120 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

Another high-walled room, with the same soft 
coloring, opens from the state apartment; there are 
no violent contrasts in this harmonious old palace. 
In this room are kept the Sheik's silver-and-green 
robes, and his state turban, crumbling away in an 
enormous flowered bandbox, from which the servant 
drew it tenderly, and with great care, declaring it to 
be two hundred years old, — a very truthful comment, 
judging from the destruction accomplished by the 
moths. 

A foretaste of one of the principal joys of a 
Mohammedan Paradise is enjoyed by the wearer of 
the emerald robes, for the Koran promises, " As to 
those who believe and do good works, we will not 
suffer the reward of him to perish ; for them are pre- 
pared gardens of eternal abode, which shall be 
watered by rivers ; they shall be adorned therein 
with bracelets of fine gold, and shall be clothed in 
garments of fine silk and brocades ; reposing them- 
selves therein on thrones." 

In this room are shown the portraits of the more 
or less civilized ancestors of the house of es-Sadad, 
— aristocratic, high-bred Mohammedans, whose day 
was in the long ago, in the time of barbaric trap- 
pings. 

Wealth and children the Koran states are an orna- 
ment to this present life, but adds that " good works 
which are permanent are better ; " however, one 



A SHEIK'S HOUSE. 121 

would certainly conclude, from the contrary impres- 
sion obtained from the innumerable portraits of the 
sons and daughters hanging on the walls, that the 
opposite direction had been carried out, especially 
as the immediate ancestor of the present representa- 
tive is now in disgrace, having been called to account 
for the disappearance of a retainer with whom he 
had quarrelled. 

At one end of this bright Oriental room, hope- 
lessly out of tone with the preparations for the fast 
of Ramadan going on about it, and in close proxim- 
ity to the dusty relics of faithful Moslems, you notice 
with astonishment the familiar stare of a telephone's 
open mouth-piece, looking perfectly unreconciled 
and unresponsive to the dull lifelessness of its sur- 
roundings. I carried away with me the delicious 
aroma of choice cigarettes, which were handed by 
the servant, of no well-known brand, however, but 
far finer because grown from the Sheik's famous 
plantation and for his sole use. These heralded the 
fruits and coffee. 

It was more amusing to sit outside in the garden 
of oleanders, while consuming Turkish coffee from 
Persian cups in filigree covers; and the delicious 
compound, soft as Burgundy in flavor, is a luxury 
most of all when taken in the orange gardens, or 
where a wild jessamine's gigantic branch flowers in 
and out of the lattice screens and hides the crumbling 
walls to which it clings. 



122 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

The dwelling-houses of the Mohammedans have 
rarely more than two stories. Land in Egypt is not 
dear, and one can afford to spread out his habitation 
over it, instead of piercing the sky. But what gives 
the greatest charm to them is that they have bor- 
rowed the effect of the atmosphere, and seem to have 
grown into the landscape, rather than have been 
built into it. 

The principal rooms of an Eastern house look into 
the garden, or court, especially those of the harem. 
Usually the windows overhanging the street are 
placed very high, and barred with iron, while the 
upper ones jut out onto the street and are screened 
with endless ranks of mushrebiyeh work. The 
entrance door is generally quite uninviting of aspect, 
low and ugly ; and behind it is the mastaba, the seat of 
the door-keeper, while in order to prevent the curious 
passer-by from viewing the court, the passage leading 
to it from the street is built in the form of an angle. 
How one's lungs breathe in the garden-scents, once 
inside this mysterious courtyard ! How cool and 
fresh the vapors of the moist fruit of dates, grapes, 
and pomegranates ! Flowers grow here as they do in 
other places; but new kinds of great yellow-colored 
things greeted us from trees of beautiful foliage. 
From the centre of the garden, a great tree grows to 
spread shade over the whole enclosure, — quite a 
mammoth in its way, if not equal to the Koran tree 



A SHEIK'S HOUSE. 123 

of Tuba, which fable tells us is so large that a person 
mounted on the swiftest horse would not be able to 
gallop from one end of its shade to the other in a 
hundred years. Concerning this remarkable tree, 
the prototype of our more normal specimens, which 
are planted in every Mohammedan garden, the 
Koran relates that a branch of it will reach from 
Paradise to the house of every true believer, and that 
it will bear fruits of astonishing beauty and size, and 
of tastes unknown to mortal men. So that if any 
man desire to eat the fruit, it will immediately be 
presented to him, or if he prefers to sup more sub- 
stantially, flesh of birds will be served ready dressed. 
As an added attraction of the bountiful Tuba, it will 
spontaneously bend down to the hand of any person 
who will gather of its fruit, and moreover supply the 
blessed not only with beasts to ride on, ready sad- 
dled and bridled, but adorned with beautiful trap- 
pings, which will burst from its fruits like Cinderella's 
carriage from the pumpkin. 

An earthly Paradise would be decidedly lacking to 
an Eastern mind without a fountain, and indeed the 
principal ornaments of the Mohammedan Jannatal 
Nairn, or celestial garden of pleasure, are the springs 
and fountains, whose pebbles are rubies and emeralds, 
their earth of camphire and their beds of musk, — so 
the saffron-sided Salsabil fountain is typified in the 
Sheik es-Sadad's well of Nile water, which answers the 



124 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

purpose of washing very well, but unfortunately has 
not been allowed to acquaint itself with the filtering 
processes of the stream of Paradise, and is brackish 
and suggestive of faded ash-color. 

The mandara, or reception-room, is paved with 
mosaic, and the more elevated sides, called the liwan, 
are covered on fete-days with beautiful stuffs and 
mats of old Persian colors. Here all native visitors 
leave their shoes ; but the superior Europeans put on, 
over theirs, ridiculously large yellow slippers, tied so 
insecurely that they shuffle upon the floors in a way 
that can only be described as slip-shod. 

The liwan is sometimes resplendent with Eastern 
porcelain and crystal ; but often the picturesque hang- 
ings are shabby, frayed, and sometimes have van- 
ished altogether, while cheap European fabrications 
have the places of the originals. 

It was during the inspection of the woman's apart- 
ment that the true condition of the lights of the 
harem dawned on us. The principal part of the 
house reserved for them is entered from the court by 
the Bab-el-Harim, and from the unattractive sur- 
roundings, the deficiencies of opportunities for edu- 
cation or improvement, the uninviting look of the 
furniture, and positive lack of comforts, one takes 
away a very melancholy idea of their lot. 

The garden where flows springs of water is there, 
to be sure, a very Paradise itself to an Eastern mind ; 



A SHEIK'S HOUSE. 1 25 

and the Koran holds out little hope to Mohammedan 
fair ones of their ever enjoying a nearer view of this 
blest abode. 

Far beyond the harem gardens are the groves 
where ripe oranges drop to the ground, but the 
women cannot touch them, only look, Tantalus-like, 
on their golden beauty. But then, women have no 
souls ; no Paradise awaits them ; no angel Israfil will 
delight their ears with songs or harmonies of tingling 
bells sounded from the tree-tops. Even the really 
feminine pleasure of gazing on golden-bodied trees, 
whose fruits are emeralds and pearls, is reserved for 
masculine eyes. 

I have ascertained this definitely from the revela- 
tions of the Koran, and it explains why the Moham- 
medans never indulge in any sentimental ideas 
concerning their wives ; they cannot belie their re- 
ligion. No doubt the women treasure a vague idea 
of the comfortable tranquillity of a future abode 
somewhere, even if the pleasures of it are more 
sparingly meted out than to their lords, and the 
Prophet Mohammed seems to have shared this belief 
himself; admitting, as a compensation for banish- 
ment from the highest heaven, the beautified females 
in their lesser Eden would at least be exempt from 
wrinkled ugliness, and evermore be young and fair. 
This was his answer in denying to an old woman the 
entrance into Paradise. To the feast of the blessed, 



126 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

the commentators admit four perfect women, accord- 
ing to the Prophet. " That among men there had 
been many perfect, but no more than four of the 
other sex had attained perfection ; to wit : Asia, the 
wife of Pharaoh ; Mary, the daughter of Iman ; 
Khadah, the daughter of the Prophet's first wife ; and 
Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed, for did not even 
the consorts of Noah and Lot deceive their husbands, 
and therefore the righteousness of even these good 
men is not available for them at the last day." So 
the spiritualistic state of the unhappy females affects 
even their mundane existence. Many advanced men 
among these Egyptians, it is true, attempt to over- 
throw tradition in the treatment of their wives, have 
even attempted afternoon tea, and allowed them to 
appear unveiled on the Shubra drive. But the pop- 
ular indignation was too great, and the gauze was 
returned folded thicker than before ; the ornaments 
carefully hidden, as directed by revelation, for the 
Koran repeats the admonition of Isaiah to the women 
of Judea against the sin of tinkling foot ornaments: 
" Let them not make a noise with their feet, that 
their ornaments which they hide may thereby be 
discovered," says the chapter entitled Light revealed 
at Medina, and declared in its opening sentence to 
be a Sura sent down from heaven, — a distinction 
which other chapters, on more vital topics than 
bracelets, do not even venture to claim. 



A SHEIK'S HOUSE. 1 27 

Mohammed was inspired also in regard to other 
articles of feminine vanity. A true believer is called 
upon to renounce not only the display of shaking 
rings which Eastern women wear about their ankles, 
but their jewels, clothes, and the trifles considered 
dear to a woman's heart. However, the self-denial 
caused by the restrictions of her attraction to every 
one except her husband is one that every Eastern 
woman is well used to making. Every one is fa- 
miliar with the distressing details of the smothered 
existence of Oriental womanhood. Many writers 
have cast a noonday glare of light on it, and the tra- 
ditions of antiquity are beginning to cower under 
that unsparing sun of criticism. The wrinkled and 
hoary notions of the old days will fall to pieces ; and 
the worship of misty antiquity, which has kept dumb 
multitudes of the world's elder daughters, has com- 
menced to disappear under the clearing-up effect of 
trade and enterprise, and a good deal of reverence 
went out of it the day railroads came to Cairo. 

The head of the house of es-Sadad was still seated 
cross-legged on his bench outside his delicious old 
domicile when we nodded " good-bye," and said 
something about the pleasure of the entertainment 
he had given us, in fulfilment of an idea that the 
occasion demanded something of the kind, although 
this mode of hospitality by proxy was unknown 
before, and one was painfully conscious of Hamlet 



128 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

choosing of his own accord to be left out of the 
spectacle we had witnessed. 

Entering the carriage, some one expressed the con- 
ventional wish to see the house again ; and as we 
drove off, the Sheik's voice followed us with a puff 
of smoke, as he threw away the end of his cigarette : 
" Inshallah," meaning, "If God wills." Was it 
irony or piety, we wonder. 



WITH COOK AT SAKKARA. 

BESIDE the red marble slabs decorated with golden 
characters which denote that Thomas Cook & 
Son have conquered tourist Egypt, appeared, one Feb- 
ruary morning, a large placard in very plain English, 
which informed the traveller who passed by, that " An 
excursion personally conducted will leave Kasr-en- 
Nil at nine o'clock, February 22nd, for Sakkara and 
ancient Memphis ; tickets fifteen shillings ; obtained 
inside." As the result of this announcement, one is 
rudely awakened from one's dreams on the morning 
above mentioned by a tinkling which proceeds from 
the neighboring electric bells, as if dozens of alarm- 
clocks had sounded at the same moment. They an- 
nounce to the waiter at the end of the hall the desire 
of the inmates of certain numbers to have their tea 
and toast served in their rooms at once ; and it means 
that fifty have accepted the invitation to the excur- 
sion. Cook owns Egypt, is the assertion of every 
traveller one meets en route, — who then describes 
how implicitly the Khedive has confided to him the 
river Nile, where the red flag of Thomas Cook 
streams from a perfect flotilla of side-wheelers, and 

9 



130 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

even flirts from the mail-boats despatched to the sec- 
ond cataract and beyond. He excavates the ancient 
tombs, and has no rivals in the field of hotels. The 
natives recognize this, and when asked the best inn 
to be had in a place, immediately answer, "Cook's," 
which often turns out to be the property of some 
enterprising Italian, is called the Victoria, and is 
only recommended in the guide-book of the great 
Sheik of the tourists. Do not the sightseers gather 
before him and listen to his wisdom before departing 
to traverse the sand wastes of Petrea; and is he not 
the well-spring of learning concerning " arrangements 
for the Holy Land," as it is called in the printed cir- 
culars thrown throughout the streets like theatre-bills 
in the Bowery? " My dear sir," he would blandly 
reply to this flattery, " for more than fifty years have 
I not made investigations concerning this strange 
creature, the tourist? Have I not given special at- 
tention to his mental capacity, wants, and caprices ; 
and as a result should I not enjoy the adulation as 
well as the offerings of my beneficiaries, and should 
not the hieroglyphics over my own doorway recount 
to the Egyptians my honors and power?" The Kasr- 
en-Nil landing-place is westward through the Euro- 
pean quarter for about one mile, and by a flight of 
stone steps you descend to the river from the em- 
bankment. Here I saw the little steamboat ready 
for the excursion ; and at the same moment the usual 



WITH COOK AT SAKKARA. 13 1 

hoarse cries and screams for backsheesh preluded 
the claims of the ragged wharf population, one 
of whom tore the reed-cage containing the lunch 
from our hands, and vanished towards the boat, 
where the boy and it turned up safely by a miracle, 
a few moments after. " Rameses II." and " III." 
were lying near by, their decks being well cleaned 
by men with hard wood fastened to their feet, and 
swinging to and fro in time to the chanted Koran; 
and a dozen of the great man's servants, dressed 
in blue Salvation Army jerseys, with Cook & Son 
across the breast in red letters, leaned far out on their 
long poles, ready to push the " Queen Hatasu " in the 
stream. I remember also seeing the graceful sweep 
of a dahabiyeh with two furled sails, and the decks a 
garden of flowery plants and pretty awnings ; a light 
and airy boat, half spectral, which, once the sails 
were set, would almost float in air. Returning 
towards evening in the calm, clear sunset, we met 
this same dahabiyeh ignominiously towed by a sput- 
tering little steam-tug, whose black smoke curled 
ironically between the sails, and mocked them. 

On deck, linen camp-chairs and a red-covered 
table occupied the open space under a colored bas- 
relief portrait of the red-skinned Queen Hatasu in a 
kneeling position, with her rather critical nose slightly 
disposed to curl at the moment it was sketched by 
the court painter to the royal family of the ancient 
dynasty. 



132 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

The steamer puffed, drew a long and deep breath 
at her vapory tubes, and proceeded at about six 
miles an hour up the river. Thereon followed the 
gray and sombre dwelling-places of old Cairo, spread- 
ing out under the morning cloud-flaked sky. Dense 
groups of decaying houses, tinted by the same color 
of dissolution, skirt the river-bank, rising far above 
the muddy water, seeming the ghost of a town, be- 
witched into an outward aspect of tumbling ruins, 
the mummy of Cairo in a faded winding-sheet. 

Farther on is the warm bright island of Roda, 
with the fig-trees and green clover patches growing 
so luxuriously between the brick walls of a sugar 
factory, its tall chimney rising over the spot where 
the Hebrew woman once laid her baby boy among 
the rushes by the river-side at the sheltered spot 
where the royal daughter of Rameses would surely 
come to perform the sacred ablutions with the rising 
of the Nile ; and this child was called Moses in the 
Egyptian, from his rescue from the waters, and the 
old, familiar story, followed out in the sacred history, 
shows him to be in his turn the rescuer of his people. 

The river winds, twists, and curves through the 
palm groves, the steep side-banks showing the rich 
black soil which will be flooded again next autumn 
by the rising river. All the way is the accompany- 
ing range of gray mountains, called Mokattam ; start- 
ing up behind the wind-mill hills, and from the 



WITH COOK AT SAKKARA. 1 33 

steamer deck, we can see the black patches in their 
sides, which are really huge entrances excavated by 
the pyramid-builders from these old quarries of ever- 
lasting hills, to which the oldest pyramid is only a 
shadowy and reflected imitation. 

The dragoman explains that modern Egyptians 
merely honeycomb the hills in getting out stone for 
building, not courageous enough to penetrate where 
the ancients sunk their dismal shaft into the stony 
heart of the mountain. There is one chief point on 
which your eye constantly lingers, and returns to it 
again : the stony apparition of two slender minarets 
piercing the sky background apparently half as high 
as the mountain, from which rises the alabaster 
mosque of Mohammed AH, the amazing loveliness 
of which must be passed over in silence. 

Beyond the undistinguished grayness of Cairo, we 
follow at no great distance a belt of green clover, 
spangled with yellow flowers, — yellow only for want 
of a more brilliant word ; the brightest sun-dipped 
coloring I have ever seen was the green and gold of 
the narrow strip of irrigated border-land between 
the Mokattam hills and the desert of the pyramids. 
" Where the water is, there is life," for here, stretch- 
ing out on both sides of the river-bed, the whole 
country is like a garden : the fellahin have merely 
to prick the soil, when grass and grain cover the 
earth, and the long-eared buffalo cows almost bury 



134 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

their mud-colored selves in tall clover, which the 
camels crunch and the donkeys munch in felicity and 
content. Harvesting and planting are going on si- 
multaneously ; and the gravest of laboring people in 
the world walk solemnly in advance of their string of 
camels, carrying the sweet grass to the market of the 
Nile, and oxen hoofs shuffle blindfolded around the 
well-trodden circuit of the sakieh wheel, bringing up 
the water in pottery jars to pour out into one of the 
little canals which irrigate the precious acres of the 
Nile delta. 

Here you can look across the whole of Egypt, or 
rather that part which the Nile has claimed from the 
desert, and has spread out along its silvery shining 
track. " Egypt is a present from the Nile," said 
the old historian Herodotus ; a gift of verdure six 
miles wide, sprinkled with groves running along the 
sand-waved desert, which is always to be seen, even 
in the widest parts. Here grows the lentil, the seduc- 
tive fruit which lost Esau his birthright; wheat, 
maize, and every crop in turn is grown according to 
the most favorable period for cultivation. Moored 
below this embankment were a forest of masts, seem- 
ing like the slanting palm-trunks without the upper 
tufts of leaves ; and out on the river, a flight of swal- 
lows seemed to steal down towards us, for the water- 
crafts had opened their wings, one on each side, and 
were flying before the wind, and in the distance a 



WITH COOK AT SAKKARA. 1 35 

single dahabieyeh resembled a large tailless kite, drag- 
ging itself along the water. I looked mystified and 
wonderingly at the river, the only thing that had not 
changed from the beginning, of which one could say, 
Before the pyramids were here ; the yellow Nile of 
the hieroglyphics, the same Nile pictured in serpen- 
tine symbol on the inscribed garments of the ancient 
statues, variously colored yellow or red, as it typifies 
the overflow or the subsidence of its waters. 

A modern sugar-mill, which mashes the succulent 
cane, stands on a conspicuous site ; the natives, how- 
ever, prefer a pair of hollow sticks, and cane is still 
sold in a stack or great bundle in the native bazaars. 
In about two hours we sight a barge improvised as a 
laundry place, and a little later we arrive at the wharf; 
at the same time a train from Cairo reaches an unim- 
portant sand-bank, at the village station, where pas- 
sengers who selected the railway journey dismount 
near a Jewish burial-ground. This is Bedrashen ; and 
the keen English rector who is conducting a party of 
feminines on a tour of the East counts his flock and 
rushes off to be the first to secure the good donkeys 
for Sakkara. I don't believe he was ordained for this 
purpose. The impatient asses on the banks, which 
have been sent from Cairo to supply the excursion, 
have hollowed out the sand with their kicking hoofs, 
and are busily sprinkling it broadcast about the 
place. 



136 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

After many varied changes and dislodgements, the 
lambs of the rector's fold at last learn the knack of 
sticking to an unresponsive donkey; and, divested of 
all impedimenta in the way of umbrellas and books, 
we gallop off. 

The scene is strikingly reminiscent of a carnival ; 
so incongruous and inconsistent are the displays of 
English ulsters, suitable only for cold European cli- 
mates, and pith helmets, designed to shelter a guards- 
man from an Indian sun. A few knickerbockers 
disport themselves over the desert, and a tramping 
costume made for the Highland Moors, with heavy 
shooting boots intended for wading the bogs, moves 
over the sand astride an Oriental ass. A fairly cor- 
rect enumeration of inappropriate tourist outfits would 
be amusing, but lengthy. The " Egyptian Gazette " 
published, during the winter, an account of a grotesque 
Mardi Gras procession, which included a representa- 
tion of the British tourist as he appears in the Orient. 
The matter was taken up by a firm of tourist agents 
in Cairo, who complained fiercely of the grievance in 
that their name had been made use of in connection 
with a burlesque of their valuable clientele. The 
affair, after a long and bitter newspaper correspond- 
ence, was settled by the explanation that the name 
adopted by the Alexandrian merry-makers was not 
really that of a well-known firm, though it so nearly 
resembled it as to easily deceive the public. 



WITH COOK AT SAKKARA. 1 37 

Egypt owes so much to her travellers that she can 
hardly afford to guy them or their eccentricities. 
She is said to love them as she does her quails, and 
even sorrows at the departure of those who think 
" Cairo would be a delightful city were it not for those 
tiresome temples and those horrid tombs." 

There are several different routes from Bedrashen 
to Sakkara ; one of these leads past the site of Mem- 
phis, and is used for the winter period, when there is 
no inundation. As we ride along, not a vestige of 
imperial or legendary glory can be seen on the dull 
sand waste, strewn with broken fragments of pottery, 
and granite blocks. 

A solitary statue of Rameses II. lies in a mud-caked 
hollow, its massive face turned to the earth ; twice a 
year the Nile bathes it, whereupon the features and 
limbs are gradually destroyed, and the cut of the 
raiment altered. A mud wall surrounds the statue; 
and a showman from Cook's mounts the little plat- 
form built over the mighty fallen one, and tells you 
that, when erected, this statue stood alone in front 
of the temple of Ptah at Memphis ; points out the 
beard artificially attached to the chin, and estimates 
the measurement before injury to have been forty- 
two feet in height At one time the colossal antiquity 
was presented to England by the descendants of this 
same Rameses. Strangely enough, the authorities 
of that wise little island refused it ; perhaps they fear 
the Greeks even when bearing gifts. 



138 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

An Arab boy was left in charge of the donkeys, 
which grazed on the fresh grass while the tourists 
were engaged in cutting out initial memorials of them- 
selves on the wooden platform above the famous 
barbarian. 

A short distance from the statue, half hidden 
among the shady palm-trees, I discovered a sand- 
stone something, — an important-looking foot, which 
possessed neither guide or conductor to recount its 
ancient memories, like similar and more fortunate 
remains. 

There was no one but the donkey boy to appeal 
to ; and nothing daunted by the unexpected demand 
on his dynastic knowledge, he replied in an off-hand 
manner, " Some more Rameses the Great;" and I 
agreed with a smile, for who could venture to deny it? 

Forty minutes more brings us to the outskirts of 
the desert ; and the way ascends to a plateau over 
the ruins of an ancient town, once inhabited by the 
embalmers of the dead. Mariette Bey's house still 
stands close to the entrance of the Serapeum ; and 
the boys who carried the lunch-basket, taking a short 
cut, had arrived there before us, and were begging 
to inherit the remains of the feast now to commence. 

The conductor hangs up a Scotch plaid ulster on 
the nose of a granite mummy-case standing upright 
against the side wall, whose eyes seem to glare at 
the impertinence from their stony slits. Every one 



WITH COOK AT SAKKARA. 139 

uses the antiquarian's deserted house quite freely, 
and the place is rapidly falling to pieces. 

The Arab boys, denied legitimate admittance, 
peered into the house through the half-open door- 
way; and the stoutest-hearted among us were not 
proof against the hungry faces, and responded by 
dividing up the rations, — which were not too abun- 
dant or satisfactory, — blissfully unmindful of the 
results until we came out again to mount. There 
on the sand were the choicest meats thrown down 
among the half a hundred donkey-hoofs, in scorn of 
the succulent swineflesh considered unclean by the 
Mohammedans. When one goes to Sakkara with 
Cook, one does not sentimentalize, and the erudition 
imbibed on these excursions is small ; for what the 
conductor possesses is appropriated by those of the 
excursion who have fought hardest for its possession, 
and followed most closely on the heels of knowledge 
as the conductor hastens through the sights. 

It was only after my return to the quiet Cairo 
apartment that a real appreciation of the Serapeum 
took place ; and for that I owe thanks to the more 
scientific travellers who were there before me. The 
Serapeum discovered by Mariette Bey occupies only 
a small part of the Necropolis Sakkara ; yet this 
corner is crowded with associations and symbols. 
Hewn in the rock are immense galleries, opening 
out from time to time into vaults, where enormous 



140 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

sarcophagi in porphyry are placed, which once held 
the remains of the Apis bulls, who had spent their 
twenty-five summers in the Memphis temples. On 
the sand above, a separate chapel was erected to 
each of the sacred animals, whose ashes were solemnly 
deposited in one of the lower cabins, dark as a ship's 
hold, to which a sloping passage descends as from a 
deck. Sixty-four vaults are only partly excavated, 
and hardly navigable by the taper head-lights, with 
which, in the rashness of enthusiasm, we were running 
in and out of the rubbishy places, in an unwholesome 
air and with every prospect of getting lost. 

Near the side of the Serapeum, the despotic build- 
ers of the Fifth Dynasty were wholly in their element 
in constructing imperial tombs, and that of Ti in par- 
ticular. This great personage has made his mortuary 
chapel to be surrounded by charming hieroglyphic pic- 
tures representing all the scenes of his life. We were 
hurried rapidly past skilful representations of human 
figures, drawn with great fidelity to nature, and presided 
over by the commanding figure of Ti himself, the pro- 
prietor of the tomb, who is represented, as usual, several 
feet taller than is consistent with truthful proportions 
to the Lilliputian stature of his wife and kindred. You 
see this lower feminine order in every case pictured 
as in real life, literally looking up to the demi-god. 
It seemed to me sometimes, as we scrutinized the 
tomb with a kodak, as if the spirit Ti himself, amia- 



WITH COOK AT SAKKARA. 141 

bly disposed as he has usually been towards desecrat- 
ing strangers, might decide even at this late day to 
flourish his baton of office, and avenge the intrusion. 

And since the graves of the gods are not respected, 
who can hope to rest unmolested in Egypt? Twenty 
scenes of the Ti drama are carved on the walls; and 
one wonders what was the effect on the good Egyp- 
tian's mind in placing him in life on such familiar 
terms with his virtues and duties, and if he lived up 
to the high art of the decorations. 

Near the entrance door is a farm-yard scene, show- 
ing the ancient Egyptians were initiated into the 
mysteries of fattening geese ; and genuine pates de 
foie gras may easily have taken high rank among the 
flesh-pots which the Israelitish children were so loath 
to leave in their adopted country. 

Spring-tide and harvest, reaping, storing, and trans- 
porting the Egyptian corn, sifting the grain and 
separating the straw by three-pronged forks, are 
represented faithfully on the smooth butter-colored 
walls. 

There are no events in the old Egyptian life which 
do not enter into the area of the chapel pictures. 
The workmen of those days even credited the dumb 
creation with intelligent speech. The reapers say to 
the ears, "Now ye are large," or, " This is reaping; 
when a man does his work, he becomes gentle, and 
so am I." A driver of a herd of donkeys declares 



142 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

to them, " People love those who go quickly, but 
strike the lazy; if thou couldst but see thine own 
conduct ! " This efficient plan of smiting the ass was 
followed by Balaam, according to time-honored cus- 
tom, and since that time has rarely failed to produce 
the proper result. 

High up on the northern side of the chamber are 
rustic scenes representing familiar occurrences, and 
filled with domestic sentiment. Softer and of a pale 
yellow color is a long procession of graceful figures 
of women accomplishing deeds of compassion, and 
offering sacrificial food from the family estate of the 
grand chamberlain, Ti ; these products of the field 
will mysteriously refresh the dead one on his return, 
and to this good end are applied appropriate gifts. 
Brugsch Bey writes : — 

" If we inquire into the motives of these inhabitants of the 
Nile valley in decorating the walls of their tombs with these 
curious scenes, it would appear that they intended to hand 
down to posterity a record of the earliest achievements of 
mankind in the promise of art civilization. Having hardly 
emerged from the simplicity of the primeval condition, 
they seem to have been proud of displaying the results of 
their peaceful conquests over the animate and inanimate 
world around them, and to have been desirous of informing 
posterity of these triumphs. At that epoch to behold was 
to admire. The chief occupation of the period was to 
embellish the tombs in the best possible manner, and it is 
these decorations which constitute the pictorial history of 



WITH COOK AT SAKKARA. 143 

« 
primitive Egypt ; the instinct of perpetuating a name and 

family there originated the stone picture'- books of Sakkara. 

Every Egyptian contributed in a more or less elaborate way 

to the records of ancient history, and the richer he became, 

the handsomer and more perfect was the structure which 

was to be the open sesame to their secrets." 

But it is a long story, the history of mausoleums ; 
the arrangements vary, the interiors differ, and the 
symbols are endless. Such a narration would in- 
clude many interesting allusions to the deceased, his 
lengthy titles, and the honors of his grandchildren 
and near relations, numbers of prayers addressed to 
Anubis, the guide of souls in the infernal regions and 
the tutelary guide of the realms of the dead. 

The most fertile mind could not imagine any 
exploits, incidents, or occurrences connected with 
the earth-life of Ti not included in the faithful drama, 
giving him an excellent opportunity to criticise his 
own biography depicted in the bas-reliefs. 

The drawings in Baedeker supply you a working 
model of them, for the bas-reliefs are clear and bril- 
liant only where skied ; those on the line are badly 
smoked by countless tapers with which the Philistine 
tourists wander in and out of the storied rooms ; 
studying their guide-book pictures, and leaving the 
originals blackened and stained by their care- 
lessness. 

What an instructive gallery it is ! what a plunge 



144 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

into secrets ! what romance ! what situations ! It is 
a real resurrection of the dead, this mortuary 
chapel of Ti, and you have only to shut out the 
present in order to live in the past ; to hear the 
words of all these personages who are so actually 
and faithfully fulfilling their tasks, unembarrassed by 
such a crowd of curious tourists. 

These scenes penetrate what has been called the 
secrets of souls. But it is a long story, and many 
things I have forgotten ; not one day, but years are 
necessary to know the open volume of the life of the 
mastabas, and long works exist, as guides through 
the deserted necropolis, which facilitate the mastery 
of the names and characters in the pantomime- 
drama. I will spare you a quotation of this momen- 
tous description, and refer you to the favorite Brugsch 
for the pleasures of erudite learning. 

The yellow graduated limestone mass near the 
Serapeum and Ti Mastaba, which looks like a pyra- 
mid in disguise, is called the Step Pyramid, from the 
designers having shaped a new task to themselves, 
graduating the monument in a series of stages ; but 
the novelty is not great. Any other pyramid when 
deprived of its external covering would look exactly 
the same ; the peculiar facts about it are that it does 
not stand like all the others, exactly facing the prin- 
cipal points of the compass, and that its shape is 
oblong instead of square, giving it a sad and solitary 



WITH COOK AT SAKKARA. 1 45 

appearance, as it stands utterly alone, and is the 
oldest monument in the world. No inscriptions 
furnish a clew to its uses, or why it was erected. No 
information can be drawn from the unique and com- 
plicated chambers of this companion of Gizeh that 
divulges its purpose. Two of the chambers are said 
to have been decorated in a gorgeous manner with 
green faience, and inlaid in mosaic pattern. Relic- 
hunters have carried away pieces of it, and a richly 
gilded skull, and the golden soles of primordial mon- 
archs stolen by the Germans, were unfortunately lost 
at the mouth of the Elbe, and only some chipped 
green-glazed doors and posts of rough limestone ever 
reached Berlin and the museum. 

Many generations have been benefited and en- 
riched by the treasures of Sakkara. Nearly the 
whole of the necropolis was explored by Byzantine 
Khalifs as well as by the modern explorers ; yet it is 
a Cairo tourist firm that has given its name to the 
latest excavation, and Cook & Son's pyramid is the 
conductor's piece de resistance, — the work having 
been undertaken, we are told, at their sole expense. 
It required colossal efforts to plod through the 
last sandy " sight," and listen to the conductor's 
weary recital of pure antiquarian facts, repeated 
in a monotonous-voiced monologue that suggested 
the remark of the poet about the katydid, " You say 
an undisputed thing in such a solemn way." 

10 



146 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

But we were soon scampering back to " Queen 
Hatasu " through the delicious clover fields. The sun 
smiled ; the real live children of the villages laughed 
and shouted at us ; and the oppressive old world was 
just fading out of mind, when a grewsome object 
belonging to the rider just in front flopped up and 
down with the donkey's gallop, before my dispirited 
eyes : it was a mummy hand appearing out of the 
rector's pocket. 




A SCRIBE AND A COPTIC S CORRESPONDENT. 



A DAY WITH THE COPTS. 

" \ T 7 HERE are we going to-day?" I asked Miss 
* * T., whose sai's had driven her from the 
American Mission. " We are going to see the wife 
of a Coptic Bey who came to my school when a 
little girl," she answered, as I mounted the box-seat 
of the English dog-cart and gathered up the reins, 
which were intended to direct a little pony that 
knew the route better than I did, and that turned 
out cleverly for camel processions and hawkers of 
tropical birds, and a native cart, whose elongated 
shafts came in view around a sharp corner some time 
after the donkey harnessed to it had accomplished 
the feat himself. 

Turning down the Boulevard Clot Bey, we passed 
plenty of obstacles in safety, reining in at each cross- 
ing, where a line of dromedaries, sometimes as many 
as twelve or fourteen, lean and wretched beasts, 
blocked the way. Upon the curious concave saddles, 
having on each side a looped thong for the accom- 
modation of the Arab's thickest toe, which served as 
a stirrup, perched as many brown and blue Bedouins; 
no one can grudge the East the possession of their 



148 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

riding equipments. The two dangers in Egypt are 
said to be falling off a donkey and meeting a camel 
procession ; and to avoid the latter it was no hardship 
to stop short at the corners, lie back in the little dog- 
cart, and let the loose-limbed complications glide by. 
As I looked around, varying specimens of the entire 
wardrobes of Eastern humanity shuffled by in slippers, 
for, in every Eastern city, money-changers, sleek and 
shaven of countenance, and cased in superior cloth- 
ing, face this crowd of shoppers from behind very 
prominent glass cages. They are quite at liberty 
to cheat and defraud their unsuspecting Christian 
brethren, but the wise ones never return to repeat 
the first transaction. 

A professional letter-writer, in the brightest of 
yellow slippers and whitest of cotton turbans, is 
making a love-letter for the young Coptic girl, 
sitting closely by his side, that her secrets may 
not reach those, who, unlike the envied scribe, have 
no right to them. 

But the scenes are endless; spinning men and 
knitting men buzz past, plying their trade indus- 
triously to lose no time. Cigarettes are peddled as 
matches are in other countries, for the Turk's love 
for them is so strong that everything else except the 
nargileh gives way to them. A boy screams, " Gizian 
Gazette," — the Egyptian daily which controls the 
news of Cairo ; not an American cable in it. Sum- 



A DAY WITH THE COPTS. 



149 



cient unto Cairo is the news thereof, but not so to 
travellers who have been at sea for ten days. 

At each street corner is a pack of donkeys, ranged 
in a line, saddled and bridled as if ready to start in 
a race. If this species of ass-flesh could be obtained 




AT A STREET CORNER. 



in America, walking would become one of the lost 
arts. All these enumerated things passed by me, and 
doubtless many others, had there been time, would 
have crowded the picture and made it more piquant, 
more typical, and seasoned with the country. 



150 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

Sixty seconds ticked away, while the camels stamped 
by at the street crossing, and I was again in the 
engrossing occupation of threading the long arches 
of acacia-trees, mindful of sleepy Orientals on foot 
or planted cross-legged at the corners, reining in to 
avoid running them down, — a performance they 
would have submitted to with great patience. " Ma- 
shallah " — " God's will be done " — can also be trans- 
lated fatalism, when the lazy Islamite retires behind 
his favorite expression rather than move an inch 
from the horse's hoofs. 

The Coptic quarter is well shaded, the houses 
separated by gardens idyll ically planted with honey- 
suckles and pink almond-trees, giving a pretty set- 
ting to the French balconies which rise out of them. 
A yellow dust powdered our hands and faces, and 
lavishly coated the Coptic women in white izars who 
passed this way; a speculative building mania has 
reached the old quarter, and the widest streets are 
blocked with stucco and mortar, — hence the dust, 
the infectious dust, of Cairo. 

Many of the houses look as if they had been 
hastily abandoned at two stories and roofed over, 
so flat and uniform is the effect. 

We stopped, or rather the pony did, at one of the 
more modern dwellings, in which impartial traces of 
Italian, Gothic, French, and Arabic architecture could 
be traced. The knocker was, however, brass, and 



A DAY WITH THE COPTS. 151 

unmistakably made in Oxford Street. A single rap 
brought a young Egyptian boy to the door, who showed 
us up three stone steps, and opened a heavy door pro- 
vided with a lock and key of tremendous proportions. 
Inside, two women were curled up on the couches, list- 
lessly fanning away flies. You would have thought 
I was an old acquaintance from the bright, warm 
greetings and the friendly, confidential manner with 
which the women extended their hands, touching 
one palm to the mouth and then gracefully to the 
forehead, saying softly, " Neharak sai'd," "Thy day be 
happy," between smiling lips and beautiful teeth. 
I was sure it was because I had the best of intro- 
ductions, but Miss T. said, "No; every one is 
received in this smiling way." Any shyness or 
embarrassment which one might have imagined 
was left out of the situation ; and I have never 
seen more charming manners among the cor- 
responding people of Europe. The women are 
unconsciously queenly and dignified, — a pathetic 
contrast to the painful disregard for comfort in their 
surroundings. Taking advantage of a pause in the 
civilities, one glance about the room revealed to us 
its sins of omission in the matter of luxury, which 
were too many to relate. The place gave no indi- 
cation of its external respectability. There were 
several long couches, all unpainted, a walnut chest, 
and on the far side, a frayed magenta rug, on which 



152 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

two children played, covered the straw matting, 
strewed with dusty litter. Drawn blinds shaded and 
concealed a little of the bareness ; and here, in eternal 
eventlessness, lived the wife and sister of the most 
brilliant orator in Cairo, idling away their hours, 
and dreaming their day dreams in an automaton 
community where it is a heresy to differ from one's 
neighbors. 

The girl mother had scarcely emerged from child- 
hood, the long braids of tawny hair still falling 
under the gauze handkerchief folded Madonna-like 
across her forehead. The other was a woman, then 
five years widowed, with high-bred and clear-cut 
features, and a grace which made the contrast be- 
tween clothes and body simply ludicrous, — a mas- 
querade of shabby finery on a statue of Canova. 
Yearning for sympathy, cheer, and excitement with 
the pure hunger of a woman's nature, yet she rarely 
went out even into the small world of her own people. 
But in a life where so much patience is exacted, a 
little more in one or the other direction is not diffi- 
cult. It was apparent they both knew English, but 
were always too bashful to speak it; and the Copts 
and I merely exchanged smiling looks, while Miss T. 
talked or read to them from the Arabian Gospels. 
I could not refrain from looking at their faces, 
their beautiful calm eyes and perfectly oval contours, 
which expressed such untouched child-natures ; and 



A DAY WITH THE COPTS. 1 53 

one could readily understand that merely living in a 
sleep, and being left to themselves during the long 
colorless days, must crush out any effort to vigor or 
work. To become somebody under the sacred per- 
secutions to which the Copts have so long been 
subjected, one must have a " heart of brass and a 
head of adamant" As Charles Wagner says on a 
different subject, "Where can ability, originality, 
and the desire to strike out find a place in a world 
so constituted?" 

We are told the Copts derive their name from an 
old city in Upper Egypt, — Coptus, — their refuge 
from the flesh-pots of Alexandria. The early Egyp- 
tian Christians, escaping from the glittering wicked- 
ness of the capital, fled away into the Libyan desert 
caves, and there starved themselves into immortality. 
A few dreamy, inactive anchorites, like Saint An- 
thony, lived in solitude ; but the real heroes banded 
themselves together, and had the courage to work, 
teach, and, to speak biblically, were " true yoke- 
fellows," like the saints at Philippi. 

The contagion of this monastic life infected prin- 
cipally men, however; but a few women imitated their 
Buddhist sisters, and took vows which descended to 
them from India ready-made. When the Christian 
Church was broken up into colonizing sects, and the 
young contemporaries of Saint Clement adopted and 
established separate systems, the poor little church 



154 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

became weaker and weaker. The Mohammedans 
bided their time hopefully and cheerfully, and then 
burst on the fourteenth-century Christians, while the 
sword won more converts from its ranks than the 
pen had added to it in all the past years. The Copts 
alone, at least a great number of them, remained 
faithful to the faith once delivered to the saints at 
Alexandria. But the Copts were enthusiasts, — how 
else could they have kept their old liturgy and their 
ancient usages, which have been preserved since the 
beginning without material differences, as the Ethi- 
opic rites seem to prove? It has been said the Ethio- 
pians received their ritual with their Christianity from 
the Egyptians in the far-off past of A. D. 330, and have 
ever since been subject to the Alexandrian bishop. 
How long could this perennially abused people have 
lived without this tenacious enthusiasm, subject as they 
were to the tyranny of brown and yellow Arab masters, 
who permitted them neither to ride a horse nor an 
ass, nor enter a public bath without announcing 
their hated presence by a bell worn around the neck. 
It is even related of them that a law existed com- 
pelling Copts to wear blue turbans, as members of 
the despised religion, and while taxed and imposed 
upon with burdens of a financial kind, they also car- 
ried about the neck a wooden cross weighing more 
than five pounds. Indeed, nothing could have been 
stricter and more unreasoning than their disabili- 



A DAY WITH THE COPTS. 1 55 

ties ia the way of education ; until fifty years ago, 
not one of the sect was allowed to learn to read or 
write, consequently only a few aspiring priests know 
these branches, and the Mass service in Coptic is 
learned by heart. However, the younger genera- 
tion of men love learning, and now that it is at last 
accessible to them, have entered government schools 
and even carried off the prizes, while nearly every 
accountant in Cairo is a Copt. 

Although the Copts may be said to be the first 
Protestants, nothing could be more conservative 
than their theological behavior ever since ; for 
since the schism of a. d. 457, between Constanti- 
nople and Alexandria, this earliest Christian church 
has neither begged nor borrowed doctrine or dogma 
from other creeds- 

The translator of the " Rites of the Coptic Church," 
published in London in 1888, writes, "The similari- 
ties and even verbal identities of many phrases 
and petitions show that the Christian ceremonies 
were conducted throughout the East in the fifth 
century in much the same manner as at present; 
and more than this, the Roman ritual contains 
so many ideas, practices, and phrases identical with 
those of the East, it is clear that, in spite of verbal 
differences, and of various additions and omissions, 
the ancient rituals of all the unreformed churches 
are monuments of Christian belief and practice, 



156 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

handed down with unimportant modification from 
the sub-apostolic age." 

Besides this internal evidence, many practices 
are proved by the allusions of early ecclesiasti- 
cal writers to be of the highest antiquity. Such 
are the unction at baptism ; the renunciation of 
Satan by the catechumen, who turns to the west 
and raises his right hand ; the wearing of the 
white robe and crown by the neophyte ; . the be- 
stowal of the ring at betrothal, and the coronation 
at marriage. 

The Copts call a wedding a joy, and speak of 
marriage as such and such a person's joy; more- 
over, these amiable people express the truth ot 
this idea in their contented family life : there are 
no separations, or very rarely; the tiny houses 
with simple rooms are the frames of happy, child- 
like natures, playing well their little parts, faithful 
over few things, and for that reason as great as 
any other children of earth. 

The order of matrimony is composed of two 
parts, — the betrothal and the coronation, or mar- 
riage. From time to time, my curious mind has 
penetrated into the ancient liturgy, and accorded 
sympathetically with the strange old rites, which 
sometimes coincide and then differ distinctly from 
the religious services of modern times, and in the 
English translation that has lately appeared, the 



A DAY WITH THE COPTS. 157 

strikingly beautiful ceremony of marriage is set 
forth clearly and for the first time. It commences 
with a notice stating that, the gifts having been 
placed in the midst, with the golden cross and 
golden ring, the priest shall say the thanksgiving, 
proceeding to various betrothal prayers for the 
perfect consortship of the young people, especi- 
ally that the wife shall be that good old English 
thing, — a helpmate unto the man; imploring bless- 
ings on the union, with many mercies, and, in the 
words of the prayer of consolation, petitioning 
finally the happiness of the bridegroom, who, the 
Prayer-book relates, has entered into the bargain 
" on account of the bitterness of man's life in 
loneliness." A marriage garland of silver gilt, orna- 
mented in repousse, is placed on the bride and 
bridegroom's young heads, and the priest then 
delivers the tag, or crown prayer, which is so 
tender and so touched with Eastern imagery that 
one cannot help quoting it for its own sake : — 

" O God, the Holy One, who crowned Thy saints 
with unfading crowns, and hast joined heavenly 
things and earthly things in unity, now also, O 
our Master, bless these crowns which we have pre- 
pared for Thy servants ; may they be to them a 
crown of glory and honor. Amen." 

It is said the Copts of to-day, whose very name 
is an echo of the word " Egypt," trace back their 



158 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

lineage to the ancient Egyptians who built the 
pyramids. The ancient tongue is spoken at every 
Mass, and the singing, chanting, even the very folds 
of the vestments, have changed less than any other 
Christian church. How difficult it is to gather 
even a respectable handful of Coptic customs, even 
by raking the few learned pastures of Makriza, 
Wausleben, or Vanleb ! They did their best faith- 
fully to unravel all the facts that could be obtained 
of Church or State. 

All that might have enlightened them and our- 
selves were in the manuscripts of the old monas- 
teries near the Red Sea; and these purely theologi- 
cal libraries were burned four hundred years ago 
by the servants of the monks, in an uprising against 
their degenerate masters. 

Since writing began, no book has been printed 
for the Coptic services. The manuscripts are 
written with a primitive reed pen, such as is 
used in the ancien regime of a dear, dead, and 
musty antiquity. 

The Mass and Gospel are read in Coptic, but no 
one understands ; the last person who is said to 
have spoken it was seen by Vanleb in 1763, but, 
being very deaf, he was not able to impart any 
useful information. In these days the vernacular 
Arabic is read after the Coptic. Clever and shrewd 
at his chosen occupation, fond of money in a 



A DAY WITH THE COPTS. 159 

harmless way, the chief reliance of Egypt in mathe- 
matical matters is a Copt. As merchants, they 
are original and enterprising, even to the matter of 
the bill, which is never sent in, but the man comes 
around to your house and says you owe him, saving 
stamps and long reckonings by his personal appeal. 

The story of the Copts interests me more than 
mosques and citadels ever can. They are the in- 
heritors of the faith, and the guardians of that first 
delivered to the Apostles, although it is impossible 
to understand how such an honor befell them. We 
were fortunate in knowing a well-informed Coptic 
official, who is one of the most progressive men to 
be met with anywhere, and I have noted his elabo- 
rate efforts to detail the difficulties between Church 
and State which seemed to be in the air, and, 
if not seen, can be felt by even an American. 
The good friend, being himself of the reform 
party, had no scruples about the powers that be, 
and, blending his account with that of the news- 
papers, has succeeded in disentangling the Coptic 
doings. It seems there is a great movement going 
on in Cairo to overthrow the heavy debts of igno- 
rance patiently borne by the descendants of the 
faint pictures of fair saints, gilded on the missals 
of their church, — the faces of the type of Rameses 
and Pharaoh, which Butler says became the faces 
of anchorites, saints, and martyrs. 



160 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

The Patriarch has been deposed ; for a long time 
there has been discontent and grumblings in the 
flock concerning the one-man power wielded by 
his Excellency, Boulros Pashi Ghali, the Coptic 
Pope of this rich old church, which owns more 
than a thousand houses in Cairo. He alone has 
managed the financial affairs, and now inquisitorial 
societies have burrowed into the accounts ; and the 
church, divided against itself on this question, has 
at last appointed a committee to look into its 
finances, of which the Patriarch haughtily refused 
to be made chairman ; had not other Patriarchs man- 
aged with traditional inconsequence, their authority 
unquestioned, and their hands unopened except 
to crowd in the piastres? 

We hear that this community, like the little Khe- 
dive, has drunk deep of the draught of indepen- 
dence, and so the Patriarch is banished to the 
desert, until at last he consents to become recon- 
ciled to the members of the liberal party, and to 
remove the ban of excommunication from Bishop 
Athanasius, who is its spirit. There only remains 
now the question of a general council in the com- 
munity; or will the Patriarch insist on his unlim- 
ited absolutism, and keep the public funds and 
the administration of secular affairs in his own 
hands? 

Yesterday his Excellency had a long interview 



A DAY WITH THE COPTS. 161 

with Riaz Pasha, the Khedive's minister of war, 
as to the course to be adopted by him in future ; 
but however it results, the condition of affairs can 
never be that which existed before the banish- 
ment. Straws show which way the wind blows, 
and a whole bale of mediaeval straws have been 
swept away by this Coptic gust against clericalism. 

There were effusive salutations at our parting 
with these ladies, for a visit from even a tourist is 
an excitement in their long daylight watches; and 
when we rose to leave, there seemed to be an 
interesting discussion going on with Miss T., which 
ended in our slipping again into the cushioned 
benches, and several cups of coffee determined the 
length of our stay. " The Effendi would be angry 
unless this civility was accepted," was the gist of 
their remarks ; and when a little later, in complete 
ignorance, I ventured to hope the two ladies would 
come soon to see us, this unseen personality, the 
Effendi, was again evoked, and, as the custom is, 
the husband came the next day alone to return 
the visit. 

Getting away at last from our friends and their 
refreshments, and driving slowly home, my mission 
friend interested me extremely in the 'advances 
made by the Americans in the direction of their 
religious affections : it seems that happily a 
remarkable change is appearing in the church ; in 

1 1 



162 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

some places they have called in a Protestant licen- 
tiate to preach after the Mass, and clamor for a 
Coptic Bible with a greed that the colporteur can- 
not satisfy. 

To the general spiritual importance of this unheard 
of event is added another : thousands of the ignorant 
women are crowding the Mission Schools, particu- 
larly at Asyut, and, tearing themselves away from 
national ignorance and customs, aspire to be taught 
to read, perhaps even to write, — an acquirement 
hitherto in the keeping of scribes and priests, 
who have squandered all too short a time in attain- 
ing this rudimentary feat of learning. 



IN A COPTIC CATHEDRAL. 

A T seven o'clock a black tray preceded an Italian 
^*- waiter through the double doors into my room, 
with three plates for two wafer pats of fresh butter, 
a crescent roll, and the tea steaming out of its pewter 
spout. Here was breakfast, the beginning of the 
day and an eye-opener to the indolent. Every morn- 
ing the same sunbeams slant in between the half- 
open blinds, and the glow of summer beguiles away 
sleep ; all the garden flowers send up fresh morning 
scents to the transparent blue of the summery atmos- 
phere, which is Egypt. In truth, however, the best 
reason for this early beginning of days is a service 
at the Coptic Cathedral ; and some moments later we 
brushed past the market stalls of the narrow streets 
just out of the Place Ezbekiyeh, paused before a 
rough arched entrance, stepping over dirty beggars 
crouching on the earth, and ran a gauntlet of crippled 
Copts in various degrees of wretchedness and dis- 
ease, who whined for piastres with a practised tremolo 
of three purring tones. We have no conception of 
this outside the East, where the beggar is an estab- 
lished institution in the land, — the voluble exception 



164 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

to the silent Eastern people, an exception with whom 
the proverb is reversible, for speech is golden, and 
silence not even silver. A dair, or ring wall, encloses 
Coptic churches and monasteries ; and behind it, 
in the centre of the open court, rises the ancient 
basilica, not big or ornate, or like any other cathedral, 
only gray and age-beaten, with black mosses between 
the arches of the stone platform which surrounds 
the building. In exploring several of the thirty-two 
Coptic churches in Cairo, we have found Abu Sergeh, 
or the church of Saint Mary, the model of all the 
later Egyptian-Byzantine buildings of the modern 
Copts. This basilica formed one of the resting- 
places of the Holy Family in Egypt, or rather the 
crypt is the supposed site ; a damp and vaulted 
rock chapel, dark and dingy as possible, the opening 
so small that you must crawl in and stoop down, in 
order to discover the niche which tradition claims 
as the spot where the Virgin and Child reposed. 
The monk, appropriating the only candle, throws a 
slender ray of light on the diamond-powdered rock, 
and the frosty stalactites glow more brilliantly than 
the artificial frescos in the church above. 

The nave of the cathedral is divided by wooden 
screens into three parts, — one a vestibule, or court, 
where a trough is usually placed for ablutions ; the 
other set apart for the men ; and the women are 
separated in the third from the body of the building 



IN A COPTIC CATHEDRAL. 1 65 

by a grating, confined to a great black hole without 
windows, where, through the one entrance door, the 
silk shrouded figures file past, going in and out, all 
in black save the golden spool placed between the 
eyes above a crape scarf falling to the feet; so far 
can they go and no farther, and through the lattice 
openings, the incense steals in from the silver censers 
at the altar, and the gray smoke envelops the hope- 
less women huddled close together on the pavement, 
suggesting a human sacrificial rite, — a " suttee " of 
Egyptian Copts. 

During the Mass, men and women promenade up 
and down outside on the board cloister pavement; 
there is often such a turmoil in the church that the 
priest steps down and implores the people to stop 
talking. In the church itself the congregation this 
morning were talking and moving about in seeming 
indifference, expending their devotion on leaving a 
suitable offering in the poor-box, though all the 
time in close proximity to the altar and within a 
few paces of the closed chancel, which was divided 
from the nave by a golden screen, where the fres- 
cos of fair-complexioned saints in familiar raiments 
smiled down on us in complaisant friendliness, the 
only near relations we had in that sea of bronze- 
colored brethren. A few tall Dutch stalls in the 
central nave were rented for a customary para, but 
the space about them was occupied by a red-fezed 



1 66 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

throng, standing so close that one can literally de- 
scribe it as a red sea, at least that was the only com- 
parison that rose to my mind. 

Vainly we sought to maintain a good personal 
example of attentive devotion, but our knowledge of 
the service was elementary in the extreme ; and as 
the Copts carry neither prayer-book nor missal, en- 
lightenment on that score was impossible. The only 
thing for the audience to do is to listen to the Mass 
and Gospel as they come from the priest's lips in 
unintelligent Coptic, or look at the pictures or the 
ostrich eggs. From the Church of the Nativity at 
Bethlehem to the mosques of Cairo, there is evidently 
no check on the number of these curious ornaments 
of Eastern churches which usually hang suspended be- 
fore the altar. In more than one church we were shown 
specimens, which sometimes were mounted on gilded 
frames, curiously carved samples of Moorish work; 
what is the influence of these original emblems on 
the religious bodies who approve them, is a problem, 
but a modern writer has found a fairly creditable 
solution, which contains besides a good deal of 
natural history in its engaging account. He says : 
" Instead of, as many think, the eggs proving a belief 
in immortality, I have read the Copts have a more 
natural belief. A priest of Abu-Sefen is quoted 
as explaining that the ostrich is remarkable for the 
ceaseless care with which she guards her eggs ; and the 



IN A COPTIC CATHEDRAL. 1 67 

people have a legend that if the mother bird once 
removes her eggs from the nest, the eggs become 
spoiled and worthless that instant ; so the vigilance of 
the ostrich has passed into a proverb, and the egg is a 
type reminding the believer that his thoughts should 
be fixed irremovably on spiritual things." The use 
of the egg may well have arisen in Africa, where this 
fact has long been observed. 

All this time the boy choristers, in black tunics and 
red hats, had formed two lines diverging from the 
opening of the screen down towards the congrega- 
tion, who could witness nothing that was taking place 
in the choir, except the occasional apparition of the 
officiating priest passing before the hekel. 1 

Understanding the power of backsheesh, an oblig- 
ing Copt hurried us by a side entrance into the 
chancel back of the screen, where we were literally 
behind the scenes ; in such a reward does one's experi- 
ence with the silver para occasionally result. The 
sanctuary was dimly lighted, and covered with about 
sixty feet of Brussels carpet, framed in by a single row 
of seats covered with white muslin, and enclosed by a 
wall, doors, and curtains, the apse winding in steps 
towards a throne-place usually occupied in cathedrals 
by the bishop's chair, but in Eastern churches con- 
taining sacred images. In this place is the holy 
table, covered with a simple linen cloth, which is 

1 A sanctuary containing the high altar, literally signifying temple. 



1 68 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

placed just opposite the screen door. Butler says, 
" Every altar in a Coptic church is detached, and 
stands clear in the middle of its chapel or sanctuary, 
and stands on a level with the floor." Although the 
side chapels are raised one step above the choir, the 
altar is never raised, but stands level. It is usually 
a four-sided arrangement of brick, solid and covered 
with plaster ; on it rests the tabernacle, or altar-casket, 
with a rich cover in a jewelled pattern which men 
earlier far than the Copts have worshipped with sweet 
patience. The Patriarch's throne was placed with its 
back to the screen, and high dignitaries' chairs were 
dimly visible from where we stood, just beyond them, 
the only women present in that sacred place. 

The priests were in motion most of the time, ob- 
scuring pictures, books, and saints with the thick 
smoke from the censer ; you have not time to notice 
all the ceremonies, which succeed one another in rapid 
progression ; but I can record faithfully my impres- 
sion that the priest kissed his left hand at every 
solemn moment. I always waited to see it happen, 
and it never failed. 

The Mass was celebrated by a priest in ample white 
brocaded cloak ; the capuchin, which he pulled over 
his forehead, was glittering with cut stones, and orna- 
ments of great size conveniently held this rather 
weighty garment from falling from the shoulder. I 
do not write precious stones, for the following reason: 



IN A COPTIC CATHEDRAL. 1 69 

The Patriarch's tag, or crown, takes the place of an 
Episcopal mitre. Long before I saw this one kingly 
symbol, which has outlasted every other mark of 
royalty, I had dreamed of what the brilliant shining 
thing would look like ; and a feeling, half of irritation, 
half of satisfaction, surprised me at its appearance. 
The crown worn by the present Patriarch was pre- 
sented by King John of Abyssinia, and looks its 
semi-barbaric origin. A silver-gilt dome is topped 
by a fine diamond cross. A combination of cylin- 
drical bands further embellished the crown, set with a 
combination of stones of enormous size ; and just in 
time to prevent a feminine burst of admiration, I dis- 
covered they were pure Palais-royal paste, and silence 
on the subject of the clerical jewels has brooded over 
my note-book ever since. 

A dark-skinned and white-hooded man served as 
assistant ; and the service seemed to consist in chant- 
ing, the removal of the embroidered cover from the 
ark, the responses being sung by the choir and 
congregation without instrumental accompaniment. 
Then the calm and white-bearded celebrant prayed 
murmuringly over the small round loaf of eucha- 
ristic bread, placed on a paten, with a Coptic cross 
to the Triune God on the isbodekon, or central part 
of the wafer. 

The altar boys lighted candles, and followed him 
around the table, chanting until the bread was broken, 



170 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

and the wine poured out, when the korban was par- 
taken of and distributed to a number of wee small 
children, girls and boys, whose bare heads were 
blessed while they circled around the table, each 
holding a small silken square before their lips, lest 
a crumb of sacred bread should fall to the ground. 
Meanwhile, the ranks of altar boys were increased by 
others, who came into the Holy of Holies, put on their 
white vestments in full view of the public, and walked 
about the enclosure with an unconcerned air. Just 
then the light came in strong, and a side door opened 
to admit the Patriarch, shrouded in a dark-hooded 
cloak, with shawl-like draperies framing the clear-cut 
and delicate features of a cheerful old face, whose 
bright eyes belied his long white beard. The crowd in 
the church who could not see him had felt his pres- 
ence instinctively; and between rushing forward to 
the open screen to receive the bread, and striving to 
receive the patriarchal blessing, the tumult increased 
almost to a panic, while the distinguished prelate was 
protected only by two strong arms, reached out with 
an unconcealed intent to knock down the clamorous 
multitude in one strong blow. The service ended, 
the boys, who leaned their elbows on the altar, acting 
as human candlesticks, dropping the sperm on the 
holy books, whose writing they revealed to the read- 
ing priest, at last snuffed the tapers, and were again 
the little ragged street boys who would in another 



IN A COPTIC CATHEDRAL. 171 

moment join their comrades in a game of marbles by 
the church steps. The men back of us were hunting 
in the dim light for their shoes, which had been 
removed during the ceremonies, and had disappeared 
utterly under the encircling line of benches; and we, 
not the detractors, but the faithful recounters, of this 
old-time liturgy, moved along with the throng, who 
had a better chance at his Holiness as he left the 
church, and with the rest of our brethren, stopped and 
kissed the Patriarch's hand, and received an old man's 
blessing, having understood at least as much as 
themselves of a service which is said in a language 
not only dead, but buried in oblivion, not even un- 
earthed by the priests, who do not learn it, but have 
committed to memory the heritage which was given 
to the saints at Alexandria almost simultaneously 
with the day when the now almost forgotten precept 
was delivered, a precept which survives so literally in 
the eucharistic service of to-day, — the Master's com- 
mand to " Suffer the little children." 

In a morning of two years ago at this same old 
church, I listened to a voice that struck a note higher 
than the others, with more of feeling in the tone ; I 
noticed it came from the little Coptic chorus-boy 
leaning against the golden chancel screen, who 
seemed to rise on tiptoe to pour forth his full 
strength in this chanted song of praise. A thin, 
pallid face it was, thrown back and lit up with such 



172 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

longing; his little frame vibrated with the inner 
emotion, and the quivering throat throbbed as does 
a bird that bursts forth in song. 

Between the chants, his hands moved nervously 
and his features worked in painful excitement, so 
that it often happened that the moment to respond 
was slightly anticipated by the chorister. My heart 
followed the boy in his ecstasies: he seemed to reach 
what we could not see ; and more real than the world 
about us was his world, peopled with the saints of 
Coptic teaching he had learned about in their glory 
of heaven. Rapt in the reality of the beatific vision, 
his sole joy was in the songs of adoring worship, 
which every day he sang to those he saw plainer 
than any in the great congregation, for he was 
blind. The boy had always haunted my memory; 
the year past I often dreamed of that spiritualized 
gaze and that ringing voice, and wished to hear it 
again. Now that I stood in the dear old place, I 
hardly dared to look up, for I thought the frail boy 
had gone to his boy loves, the maris ; 1 but there he 
was, his pale brow carved like a della Robbia against a 
cloud of gold, still singing, the same pure look on 
his face, which was now pressed ardently against 
the pale cheek of the screen-angel. 

1 Mari, the Coptic word for saint. 



JAFFA TO JERUSALEM. 

EAVING Alexandria, it is difficult to make 
"* — 4 up one's mind which is the most enchanting, 
to look back at the harbor, the Orientals, and the 
great pillar of Pompey behind the palm gardens, or 
outward on the endless blue of the Mediterranean 
Sea and the ship's bow ploughing its way through 
the waters. 

March is the month for rains, and an atrocious 
shower soon obscured the charm of both views, 
while the exquisite skies of El Masr disappeared 
in the general oblivion. The steamers of the Khedi- 
vial line do not touch at Port Saifd going out, and 
we made the voyage in twenty-four hours, — a matter 
of felicitation indeed, when one is trusting a full 
complement of native officers and seamen in a queer, 
unsightly vessel, with a reckless-looking name in 
Arabic characters at the stern, and the Turkish 
crescent floating over rusty boilers and unwashed 
decks, from the mast where we missed the familiar 
colors which are supposed to indicate that "Bri- 
tannia rules the waves." 

The little vessel swayed and twisted in the heavy 
breakers, and nearly every one quailed before the 



1/4 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

miscellaneous contents of the menu presented at 
ten and five o'clock, in the dark salon bordered with 
narrow cabins, where the stoutest-hearted among us 
turned the color of " the pale horse of the Apoca- 
lypse " on entering. Early in the morning, we 
sighted the stretch of breaker-foam sea-coast, glis- 
tening in the spring sunshine of Palestine. The last 
hours were, as usual, the most trying, and the buf- 
feting and knocking about experienced in the ladies' 
cabin made landing anywhere a thing to be desired. 

Far in the distance appear the faint blue hills of 
Jaffa, — the bright sand-banks first, and then the 
Judean mountains. From the deck of our steamer, 
one can see the bright patch of town straggling up 
the rocky slope, and nestling among the orange 
groves, while the great ant-hill of Syrian deck pas- 
sengers crowd towards the bow. However, it is 
impossible to define the movements of a Turkish 
steamer, — now full speed, now slowly, developing 
misunderstandings every moment more chronic be- 
tween the engineer and the pilot. 

An injudicious edict of Mohammed, prohibiting 
the use of bells, makes the signals an elaborate 
system of shouts. The Khedivial Line has not as 
yet adopted the device resorted to by the Head of 
Islam in Constantinople, who argues very plausibly 
that since electricity was not known in the Prophet's 
time, the Koran plainly does not include electric 



JAFFA TO JERUSALEM. 17$ 

bells in the general prohibition. Finally we drop 
anchor a mile or two from shore. 

There is no harbor here or elsewhere on this dan- 
gerous coast, and steam is always kept up, to avoid 
the chance of a sudden wind sweeping down and 
obliging the captain to run far out to sea, to avoid 
the fate which overtook the ancient mariner Jonah, 
whose story is one of the catastrophes incidental to 
this spot. 

The proper quarantine officials make great diffi- 
culty about our landing at all, returning in kind the 
courtesy which other lands have so severely imposed 
on this supposed point of departure of Asiatic 
cholera. It is with real joy that we see two boats 
approach from the land, and a jostling, eager crowd 
of Turks in bright red jerseys, inscribed Cook & Son, 
appear on one side of the ship, while, on the other 
side, sailors labelled " Gaze " elbow their way to 
the deck ; for the rival agents have to be placed on 
different sides of the vessel, lest they should devour 
one another. On these occasions, the excited Arabs 
rush about the decks, hoarse as wolves, shouting at 
each tourist, " Cook," " Gaze." Once divided, like 
sheep from the goats, in happy unconsciousness of 
what landing at Jaffa might mean, one by one the 
passengers creep down the ship's ladder, washed by 
breaking waves, and are seized by a couple of sailors 
and thrown unceremoniously into the arms of others 



176 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

stretched out from the great roomy boat the instant 
it is dashed up against the ship's sides. 

A confused impression remains of the next ex- 
perience. The steamer dips her ensign in farewell 
to us, and with slow, powerful strokes the crew give 
way; the slight Arabic form, almost a bas-relief, 
shows at each stroke intense strength, which seems 
exhaustless. 

A wind has arisen, with rain, and the comparatively 
calm sea has become more perilous every moment. 
The red-coated sailors seem to climb up the crest 
of every towering wave, standing one at each oar, 
throwing their weight on every stroke and praising 
their Prophet in sharp, ringing tones, " Allah," 
" Allah." A reef of pointed rocks in part shelters 
the town ; we dash through a slit of about twelve 
yards, and in a moment more are washed by the 
heavy surf right up to the stone custom-house 
steps. 

There are few landings which present as many 
perils as this of Jaffa ; and many stories of shipwrecks 
are told in the quiet, passive manner of the East, 
which make them only more thrilling, for, in the 
Jaffa way of thinking, our landing was comparatively 
quiet. 

Jaffa is the genuine Orient; at least, the buildings 
by the sea have undergone no change. There is a 
frail, musty look about the old city, as if it had just 



JAFFA 1^0 JERUSALEM. 1 77 

been unrolled from its ancient winding-sheet, and, 
like a mummy, would crumble away and disappear 
if one only cantered over the rough pavements. No 
road leads into it, and the Europeans have exhausted 
their knowledge of diplomacy at Constantinople to 
obtain a concession for a harbor. Very flat, roof- 
screened houses, a few mosques, and some sad and 
forlornly clad natives make up the seaport of 
Jerusalem. 

A mule may be hired at the water gate, but, 
owing to the slatternly pattern of the streets in this 
vicinity, a creaking hack can only reach you beyond 
in the suburbs. For your first pilgrimage, you climb 
the steep lanes leading upward to the plain occupied 
by the hotels, striving to keep in sight the luggage, 
each piece strapped to an Arab's back, there not 
being a single street where the slimmest and most 
diminutive baggage-wagon could roll and jolt along. 

Everything is carried on the back; as some one 
remarked, " The camels are drays, the donkeys, carts, 
and the fellahin, trucks," in this primitive country 
of Haroun and Zobeide. Fenced by high wooden 
boards towards the sea, are a few scattered houses 
of the type which are usually cramped and crowded 
into a factory village at home. A few yards inside the 
enclosure, we encounter one of these transplanted 
New England cottages, displaying the sacred blazon, 
" Jerusalem Hotel." Across the sandy roadway, the 



178 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

sun strikes a more familiar sign in clear and distinct 
letters, " Cook & Son." Nothing could afford a 
greater contrast, a more crowning absurdity, than 
these modern dwellings surrounded by tall palms and 
prickly-pear-trees, — an architectural anachronism 
made still more ridiculous by the absence of the 
usual hacks and horses of a new American village, 
which are here replaced by donkeys and donkey 
boys. A couple of urchins, with the merriest good- 
humor, gaze at our dusty shoes and grin invitingly ; 
their meaning can easily be guessed at, especially as 
they carry a bootblack establishment, and offer a 
" shine " for a shilling, finally accepting twopence. 

A little old lady, ensconced upon a settee outside 
the hotel, seems to belong to the surroundings, and 
an appeal to her to solve the apparition of the New 
England cottages brings out the information that they 
were transplanted bodily to Jaffa several years ago, 
by a Second Adventist Colony from Chicago. 

Wood being scarce in Palestine, the only supply is 
from Russia; the Chicago colonists, following the 
shrewd promptings of local far-sightedness, brought 
with them the necessary household utensils, ploughs, 
furniture of astounding patterns, and flowery chintzes 
to suit the taste of the Adventist ladies. The " Sec- 
ond Sleepers," as they are dubbed by the natives, 
were soon scattered by fever and poverty: some 
returned to America; others have remained and 



JAFFA TO JERUSALEM. 179 

gone to work. The plucky tourist agent, who defies 
the Palestine Protectorate of an English firm, is one ; 
and another is the quaint little dame, clad in a faded 
gown and 1830 bonnet, who ekes out a pittance from 
the tourist, who usually buys her badly pressed Pales- 
tine blossoms after listening to a half-mumbled story 
which falls from the wrinkled lips of this self-exiled 
Niobe from Chicago. 

The bedrooms of the Jerusalem Hotel are bare 
and plain as convent cells. A reminder of the 
former occupants (the Adventists) exists in the 
Scriptural names printed above the doors of each 
apartment. Dan and Ephraim are opposite to 
Judah and Ezra, — which would be edifying, if not 
so comical. All are alike in an original state of 
barrenness ; the floor boards, roughly joined to- 
gether, and a most unattractive-looking iron bed, 
fail to improve the general appearance. At lunch 
you are served with the usual programme of the sea- 
son, — artichokes, stringy chickens, and eggs; and 
the landlord, as he hands the dishes, assumes a most 
unhappy expression if they are rejected. 

After looking at Mohammedan Jaffa, the mosques 
and orange-groves, we discreetly amble along the 
steep path leading to the house of " Simon the 
Tanner," near the sea, with the hills in front and 
the Mediterranean beyond, pay a most moderate 
bill, and take the Jaffa and Jerusalem Railroad for 
the Holy City. 



180 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

At the end of the nineteenth century, the predic- 
tion of Thackeray has been fulfilled : with a victim- 
ized shriek, a locomotive steams its steel anatomy 
along the iron road, tugging a train of six American 
cars over the first Palestine railway. The highway 
from Jaffa to Jerusalem was first a mere track, then 
a deplorable road was developed, and the first 
carriage appeared fifteen years ago. This lumber- 
ing and half mediaeval equipage, which can still 
be seen at Jaffa, was often attached to a couple of 
gaunt horses, aided by a third whose only harness 
was a neck yoke and rope trace. The roomy landaus 
in present use have been in Palestine about three 
years, and until the railroad came, were an admi- 
rable substitute for their uncomfortable predecessors. 

The railway was first planned through the plain 
of Esdraelon, from Acre to Damascus, the Turkish 
government granting a concession to its Ottoman 
subjects in Syria, — a genuine Eastern bit of specu- 
lation, and one of the Sultan's pet hobbies, prob- 
ably because the line was surveyed through his 
possessions in Palestine. The survey completed, 
the concession lapsed in consequence of difficulties, 
and therefore it has lost the distinction of being 
the first Palestine railway. The new railway is so 
opposed to Mohammedan ideas that even after 
the iron track was laid, a band of bigots upset the 
first train which attempted the journey. 



JAFFA TO JERUSALEM. l8l 

It is not difficult to understand the astonishment 
of the Syrians at the rushing sound of the train 
speeding past their sleepy villages. At first it was 
something quite incomprehensible to them. Men 
sometimes slept in unconcerned security on the 
track; even now it sometimes happens that the en- 
gineer whistles and blows in vain, finally stopping the 
train, and calling out to a man on the track to take 
his neck off the rail. " Why don't you turn out 
for me?" he answers; "I can't trouble my sleep." 

The concession for the Jaffa and Jerusalem Rail- 
way was granted by the Porte in 1888 to a com- 
pany styled, " Societe Anonyme Ottomane," having 
its headquarters at Paris. Although the firman 
was conceded to co-religionists, no Jewish syndi- 
cate in any part of Europe would have anything 
to do with it, from financial fears. From a relig- 
ious point of view, Protestants raised an outcry 
against the enterprise, and refused help, while the 
great European powers declined to aid, on the 
ground of politics ; so it is evident that the new 
enterprise would have suffered the same extinguish- 
ing fate as the former, had not the following re- 
markable event taken place. A party of extreme 
orthodox Catholics clubbed together, founded a 
bank with a capital of ,£800,000 and launched the 
railway by offering the shares to the English and 
French public ; the publicans and sinners alike 



1 82 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

regaled themselves with the eighteen thousand de- 
bentures ; and even the Holy Father himself is said 
to have been a large investor. 

With the sum thus raised, the contractors agreed 
to build the road. The reasons which induced the 
Catholic Bank to undertake the scheme caused all 
sorts of rumors to spread about, and the European 
diplomatists looked with round, astonished eyes at 
the keyless enigma, finally deciding that the en- 
terprise was undertaken to aid the ten thousand 
pilgrims in making their annual visit to Palestine. 
This solution met with great applause, and seemed 
appropriate to the religious Protectorate established 
over the Holy Land by the Latin Church. 

The immediate country around Jaffa is flat, and 
planted with orange-trees in every direction, yielding 
the mammoth fruit which commands the highest 
price in Covent Garden Market. 

At the shrine of Abu Nebut was dug the first 
spadeful of earth for the Jaffa and Jerusalem Rail- 
way, and the Graces showered on this portion of 
the country the fairest of fields and the reddest 
of lily blossoms, and the great arbiter of human 
health — the sun — is in evidence every day of the 
year. 

There are five stations between Jaffa and Jerusa- 
lem ; each one is a small structure, fenced about 
and well kept. The resources of flowers and foliage 



JAFFA TO JERUSALEM. 1 83 

are made the best use of, and no unsightly heaps 
of rubbish litter the pretty grass round the little 
buildings. 

Lydda, twelve miles from Jaffa, is the first stop- 
ping-place, all surrounded by pale olive-trees and 
the brighter foliage of palms. 

The Plain of Sharon, through which we pass, shows 
more than anything else the contrast between luxu- 
riant vegetation and absolute barrenness in Palestine. 
By far the most important station is Ramleh, but 
only faint glimpses can be had of the town and the 
crusaders' church, the scene of their two centuries 
of conflict with the Mohammedans ; now it is the 
most go-ahead place in Palestine, although some- 
what ruinous in appearance, containing a Greek 
population of about fifteen thousand persons, besides 
Moslems and Jews. 

The train proceeds along with a calm and stately 
method of progression of about eight miles an 
hour. We are packed as tightly as we will fit, for 
the train is crowded, and we share our seat with 
the Turkish mail-bags, while the Tiberian mail- 
clerks, at odd moments, sort out the loose letters, 
and hand them over quite carelessly at the dif- 
ferent stations. But we gain much by our lei- 
surely railway travelling; it is delightful to follow 
the fellaheen at their odd ploughing and tilling, 
and catch long glimpses of the olive-trees, grown 



1 84 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

great and gray among the refreshingly green barley 
of the fields. Thirty-one miles from Jaffa, a head- 
land of blue mountain flashes up from the valley, 
and blots out the view, but we keep right on, and 
one wonders how it is possible to continue through 
the rocks which entirely hide the little station called 
Der Aban, meaning, in Arabic, " the convent," ac- 
cording to our interpretation of the postman's 
broken English. 

Fourteen miles from here is Bittir, scooped out, 
as it seems, from the surrounding Judean hills. 
The peaks and gorges make a wild picture, and 
the only sign of human dwellings are the Bedouin 
tents, — the same " black sepulchres " that the chil- 
dren of Israel probably possessed in this valley, 
for " Joshua blessed and sent them away, and they 
went into their tents." 

For the last hour we have been winding and 
curving through the rugged hillsides. A convent 
cross on a dreary height, and yonder a garden 
slope, have foretold the city. Feeling there was 
a presence near, half fearing to look, no one has 
spoken, until suddenly the postman draws in his 
head from the open window and says quickly, 
" Look ! how nice ! from here is Jerusalem ! " 

The railway company have recognized the pro- 
priety of having their station outside the town, and 
every day at this hour a crowd of astonished 



JAFFA TO JERUSALEM. 185 

natives, bringing children and family, congregate 
to await the arrival of the slow, dragging train. It 
is as different as possible from one's preconceived 
ideas, this arrival at Jerusalem. Across the plat- 
form, the scene is made madly gay by an encamp- 
ment of canvas-curtained wagons, whose turbaned 
drivers lean over the station fence and shout out 
the accustomed, " This way for the Jerusalem Hotel," 
" Going to Howard's." Once inside, the driver flour- 
ishes a whip with a defiant whoop, and the panting 
horses rush down the valley of Hinnom, and in 
ten minutes more the dreary tower of David looms 
through the cloud splendors of sunset; the great 
confusion of tongues at the Jaffa Gate, from the 
Jewish lotus-eaters, reaches our ears, and we draw 
up at Howard's Hotel on Mount Zion, just outside 
the town. The wall which actually defines the 
modern Jerusalem is that restored by the crusa- 
ders, and repaired later by the Mohammedans, mak- 
ing the city an irregular square. Every one knows 
this wall is pierced by one modern gate, and five 
ancient ones. The Damascus is the chief entrance 
for pomp and ceremony, but through the Jaffa Gate 
pours a constant procession of Eastern races, — 
money-changers, and women veiled with flowered 
gauze more or less soiled ; and a piteous detach- 
ment of lepers are drawn up in single file behind 
their substantial tin alms-pails, expecting backsheesh 



1 86 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

from the crowd of shoppers sweeping around the 
market stalls, which form a sort of promontory divid- 
ing the stream of street loungers from the purchas- 
ers of imposing cauliflowers and musty onions, 
which are exhaling their share of the inconceiv- 
able odors represented at the market-place. 

Near the Russian settlement is a fine entrance 
called the New Gate, and, half jesting, I ask the 
voluble guide, who has a legend for every other, 
if this one had any traditions ; he would not com- 
mit himself, but replied, " Not yet, not old yet, 
but they are coming." 

Opposite the old gate leading out on the Damas- 
cus road are the brown, low tents of a band of 
gypsies, in profile like angular mushrooms, spread 
over the slightly rising ground under the great 
wall's shadow. The gypsies are squatting on the 
ground in their usual languid groups, the gray 
heads and children in council assembled, and half 
submerged in smoke; their umber-colored cloaks 
tone with the dull shading of wall, earth, and tents, 
and the gypsies seem to grow out of the surround- 
ings as a sombre type of earth's children, midway 
between the half-human faun and the European. 
The development of costume flashes out of the 
old-time gateway of Saladin. A group of native 
women are the vanguard of civilized dress in Jeru- 
salem, having inclined favorably towards as pretty 



JAFFA TO JERUSALEM. 1 87 

a rose and blue satin umbrella as one can see 
on the Riviera, while draped from head to foot in 
a white sheet which, according to the custom of 
the country, some day will be their shroud. The 
parasol forms a hopeful leaning towards European 
dress, and forestalls a not far distant day of inde- 
pendence for these Asiatics who have adopted so 
great an innovation over the ideals of a simple, 
worn-out past. 



THE NEW JERUSALEM. 

JERUSALEM outside the walls, as seen from the 
ramparts near the Damascus Gate, presents a 
curious contrast between the old and the new. The 
suburbs extend over an area larger than the city 
itself, spreading a mile in each direction, in unbroken 
stretches of rosy roofed houses encamped about the 
plains and creeping up the distant hill-slopes, like 
some new conqueror of the oft-conquered country. 
Thirty years ago there did not exist a single house 
outside the walls ; the city itself and the vicinity 
were desolate and forlorn. Now a solid flank of 
hospitals, convents, and dwellings reaches out almost 
as far as the eye can see, everything smells of varnish, 
or is newly polished ; and blows from hammers and 
chisels, marking even time with the Koran, sound 
from a hundred native workmen singing at their 
stone-cutting, while a pale, bearded monk, under a 
white umbrella, cuts the sky-line in his airy tour of 
inspection of the future monastery, reared to such 
colossal heights by his Moslem laborers. 

These substantial dwellings, of immense square 
blocks of limestone, faint pink and brown in color, 



THE NEW JERUSALEM. 1 89 

like variegated marble, speak in a fragmentary 
lapidaric way of the New City. Beyond are the 
sweet blue hills of Moab ; the crest of Mizpeh, and 
the silvery shades of the Olive Mountains, sliding 
down to the Kidron Valley, are all shaded and soft with 
the wonderful glow of sunset, enveloping at last the 
old city of ruins itself, and blending the past and 
the present. I don't know what picture of modern 
Jerusalem other people have made in their minds, 
but to me it was a great surprise to find an electric 
light just outside the Damascus Gate, a telegraph 
line guiding the eye toward Mount Zion, and a rail- 
way whistle sounding over the Hill of Evil Counsel. 
These improvements owe their existence to Euro- 
peans ; however, innovations, though quite un- 
necessary from the Turkish point of view, are not 
often opposed, — the Turks sitting quite still, like 
well-ordered school-boys, until their names are 
called, then, when they are told to do so, they 
come forward unhesitatingly, and applaud and sanc- 
tion without stint. The Europeans are quite use- 
ful in doing the hard work, and the natives reap 
the golden returns with lazy appreciation of their 
benefits. 

In 1869, there were not a dozen carriages in the 
country; now there is a cab-stand outside the Jaffa 
Gate, and the hotel where we are stopping is Western 
in every detail. On the first floor the usual Conti- 



190 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

nental table d'hote is served, with the ever-present 
epergnes of fruit, and sponge-cake pyramids, and the 
system of fragmentary allotments of fish and fowl 
prevails as in an Italian inn. 

The triumph of having secured a dirt road between 
the seaport and the Holy City is now eclipsed by the 
construction of an iron one ; the carriage road between 
Jaffa and Jerusalem was constructed at the time of a 
prince's visit to the Holy Land, — the farmers and 
fellaheen alike being forced to leave their own fields 
and prepare " to make low the hill, the crooked 
straight, and the rough places plain " for the honorable 
visitor. It was all done in true Eastern fashion, but 
done very successfully, and at a considerable outlay 
of capital which did not come from Turkish pockets. 
A story is told which illustrates the gracious way the* 
Turks accept the improvements of civilization. A 
band of enterprising Germans, who founded a colony 
only a mile from the city gates, desired very natu- 
rally to have a good roadway to replace the donkey- 
track winding out to their settlement. They could 
not very well afford such an expensive luxury ; and as 
the road would pass near by the dwelling of a very 
rich EfTendi, and he would gain as much benefit as 
themselves, they summoned courage to ask his assist- 
ance. This request met with a prompt refusal ; the 
natives did not require a road, and if the Germans 
wanted one, why, they must pay for it, and they did ; 




A STREET IN JERUSALEM. 



THE NEW JERUSALEM. 191 

but the Effendi does not disdain to use it every day, 
although he has not contributed a piastre. 

Sentiment aside, Jerusalem impresses the majority 
of travellers as a dull, uninhabitable town. The 
Western mind frankly admits, when unassisted by 
spiritual cultivation, that the place might be made 
more inspiring if the postal service was reliable, and 
the newspapers unmolested. Turkish Jerusalem pos- 
sesses the unique anomaly of two mail services exist- 
ing side by side. Some enterprising Austrians have 
started a post-office, and it is considered a great 
advantage to send mail by their route. A letter 
addressed to England, and another to a station 
seventy miles distant, and sent by Turkish transport, 
were known to reach their destination the same day. 

The telegraph was introduced in 1865 from Con- 
stantinople ; but the electric wire is slower than the 
post, and one rarely trusts to it. In a secluded office, 
a native operator receives the messages which may be 
sent out to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, accord- 
ing to the activity of the one messenger boy employed 
by the company to deliver messages. One of the 
greatest deprivations to the foreign residents is the 
inability to receive newspapers. The Turks are ex- 
ceedingly sharp in this matter, allowing only one to 
be taken at the hotel, which is published in Alex- 
andria, and have effectively suppressed the attempt 
to print an English daily paper. Another, in German, 



192 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

was started, and stood the test for a time, but after- 
wards suffered the same extinguishing fate. On the 
other hand, considering the parcels post is cheaper 
to Jerusalem than to Gibraltar, though double the 
distance, it would seem that the residents of Palestine 
could safely indulge in blissful anticipatory indica- 
tions of an amelioration of the above-mentioned 
failures. 

Who would ever suppose that the suburbs of Jeru- 
salem, which the Europeans occupy so securely, were 
only a few years ago the haunt of wild beasts, and 
that leopards and jackals prowled around the " waste 
places," while travellers were few and far between, 
and Cook & Son as yet unknown? 

The true repairers of the " waste places " finan- 
cially are the tourists and pilgrims, who leave an- 
nually $75,000 from their' visits, besides the large 
amounts annually sent to priests, Jews, and religious 
and charitable institutions in Palestine. Isaiah was 
right : " for brass they bring gold " (stamped with the 
Victorian monogram), and for stones, the " iron " road 
has borne out the prophecy. An estimate of these 
golden bringers of prosperity to Jerusalem includes, 
besides Russians, four thousand Greeks, a few hun- 
dred Armenians and Copts, and nearly four hundred 
Americans, of whom two hundred and seventy 
were naturalized in the district during the past ten 
years. 



THE NEW JERUSALEM. 1 93 

Of the amount of grapes brought into the city 
last year, the convents took 500,000, public houses 
400,000, and private families 200,000 pounds ; all 
this shows the need of this increasing community, 
and gives encouragement to pioneers of progress 
in the Holy Land. 

Certain straws show which way the wind blows; 
and the permanence of these signs of land invest- 
ments shows them to be more than straws. When 
we consider that Jerusalem has almost no manu- 
factories, little foreign commerce, and a population 
of poor people, the price of land is astonishing. 
Speculation, deathless even in this Oriental country, 
is everywhere to be met with ; properties change 
hands every year, and the prices demanded and 
obtained are exorbitant. For land within a quarter 
of a mile of the city in any direction, according to the 
Consular Report, the following prices are quoted for 
1893: two acres sold in 1890 for $250 an acre, in 
1 89 1 for $750; twelve acres sold in 1890 for $455, 
and in 1892 for $2,178 per acre. Several acres 
of this land sold in 1886 for $363, and advanced 
in less than ten years to $6,534 per acre, while 
land outside the Jaffa Gate, an excellent location, 
sold in 1865 for $1,000, and in 1 891, $24,000 was 
received for it. Almost the first building erected 
outside the walls of Jerusalem was the school 
founded by Bishop Gobat, which still stands on 

13 



194 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

a little corner of Mount Zion under the shadow 
of David's tomb ; Talitha Cumi, the German hos- 
pital, is neighbored with lordly buildings, which 
have sprung up during the last twenty years in 
this retired spot, where now the rows of stone 
houses rise up before the pretty rose-planted 
gardens and hide the vista, while the busy settle- 
ment about the hospital gives life and movement 
enough and to spare. The great land barons of 
Jerusalem are the Russian monks, who, in inter- 
vals of mystic revery, have acquired almost one- 
fourth of the city. Some inner vision has revealed 
to them the speculative advantage of an addition 
to our hotel, which they already own ; and a 
spiritual father may be seen any hour supervising 
the masons with a trained overseer's eye and a 
business faculty which seems to co-exist with a 
special devotion the Russians have toward the Holy 
Land. 

For a quarter of a century this power has ap- 
parently rivalled the Latin Church in profitable 
investments. At the gates of the Holy City on 
the northern plateau, which has served for the 
encampment of the destroyers of her peace in 
every age, the Sublime Porte has ceded to Russia 
an immense tract, which is surrounded by a high 
wall enclosing a great cathedral, consulate hospi- 
tals, and convents, for the thousands of pilgrims 



THE NEW JERUSALEM. 1 95 

who make it, at Easter time, a populous little 
Russian village condensed between the giant walls. 

It is a disturbing problem to all sects alike, — the 
dangerous encroachment of this ever-militant church, 
which has built a great square tower on the summit 
of Olivet, in the most favorable spot for the obser- 
vation of the whole country, — the Dead Sea, the 
mountains of Moab, — and has chosen other military 
perches for watch-towers in different parts of Pales- 
tine, and scarcely veils the real destiny of the 
immense sums raised at great sacrifice from the 
peasantry every year for works of piety in the Holy 
Land. 

The time of Easter is approaching; and before 
day breaks, a procession of fantastic pilgrims, at 
once smiling and tragic, pour out of the Russian 
quarter, chanting along the way towards the Holy 
Sepulchre, the powerful tones of the men blending 
so harmoniously with the silvery voices of the 
women and children. They seem like an incarna- 
tion of Tolstoi's stories: here is Petrovanish, who 
donned his thick fur coat, wrapped the heavy cloths 
about his legs, and tied on the sandals the morn- 
ing his pilgrimage began, when the whole village 
accompanied him a day's journey on the steppes. 
Only a few hours more, — when his pictures have 
been passed trembling into the Holy Sepulchre, 



196 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

the lights have sparkled on the Madonna's golden 
tiara, as it was pressed on the Holy Shrine, — and, 
with these blessed pictures carefully tied in a 
handkerchief, — one for each in the Russian village 
at home, — and a gigantic cauliflower under one 
arm, the peasant, with glowing face, returns again to 
his convent, full of gladness, to dine on the fresh 
green cabbage. 

The Armenians occupy the garden place of the 
city. What are Russian gilding and fabulous jewels 
to the clumps of rich palm and date trees, cluster- 
ing about the convent avenues and the flower- 
topped Italian walls? They, too, have acquired a 
great property ; and pilgrims are housed in a build- 
ing adjoining the convent, in family apartments 
shown us by a priest, who estimated five thousand 
yearly visitors for the Easter pilgrimage. 

It is incredible how anything could be accom- 
plished, in view of the Turkish opposition at first 
directed to all monastic acquirements of territory. 
The same hooded men who now reap the reward 
of perseverance were obliged to bring in each 
stone for the new convent by hand, throw it in 
some careless way about the grounds, in order 
not to excite suspicion of their plans, and only 
ventured to build after the materials were safely 
introduced inside their strong walls. 



THE NEW JERUSALEM. 1 97 

The material of these great religious houses is 
stone, nearly porous, so it would take several 
years for it to become proof against dampness, 
were it not for the old quarries, which furnish 
cement to glaze the outside walls and prevent 
their destruction. 



SOME JEWISH COLONIES. 

\T OT very many years ago, the Jew was never 
-*■ ^ mentioned among polite Eastern nations with- 
out some parenthetical excuse, " I have met a Jew 
(begging your pardon)," " This man is a Jew (beg- 
ging your pardon)." Although this apologetic form 
of presenting the Hebrew dates back to an age 
beyond our own, there is still much to be desired 
in his treatment; and though the Hebrews are not 
actually pelted with stones, still, the diluted quality 
of the mercy vouchsafed to them is the most dis- 
couraging part of the process of burying the religious 
hatchet. 

A few people have undertaken to prove that the 
Jews did not come into the world with saddles on 
their backs ; and to-day the colonies in Palestine have 
made probable the near celebration of a banquet of 
reconciliation by the favors shown them by various 
colonization societies of England. 

To go from within the walls of Jerusalem to its 
suburbs is to leap over two thousand years, notwith- 
standing the close proximity of the city to its modern 
offspring. For my part, the greatest surprise await- 



SOME JEWISH COLONIES. 1 99 

ing a first visit to Jerusalem is this very contrast and 
its supreme meaning. Coming from the narrow net- 
work of tunnelled alleys, enclosed with dingy walls, 
probably haunted by epidemics, the new city outside 
the Jaffa Gate, with its great clean hospices and pros- 
perous-looking dwellings, seems a paradise of pleas- 
ure in exchange for the opposite of dreary ruins. 

The first of the suburban buildings to attract 
attention resembles a barrack for soldiery on the 
slope of a hill behind the excavations for the tomb 
of Herod's wife Mariamne. These low one-story 
dwellings are the Montefiore almshouses, the first 
buildings erected outside the walls. Sir Moses 
Montefiore built them in 1865, as a refuge for poor 
Jews, to whom they are absolutely free, one family 
having lived there for nearly thirty years. So it 
happened, strangely enough, that the first charitable 
institution for the poor in Jerusalem was a hospital 
founded and supported by the great English phi- 
lanthropist, and he was a Jew. 

Near by, a Dutch wind-mill produces a queer 
effect: it serves the neighboring German Templar 
Colony, where the smoke curls cheerily from the 
little red chimney-tops, and the vines cling caress- 
ingly to the tiled beams; and one thinks life must 
be very sweet and cosey within the tastefully painted 
houses, so German in appearance you almost fancy 
you can hear the Rhine songs. 



200 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

The interest excited over the return of the Jews 
to Palestine has been manifested in a hundred ways, 
and is looked upon with great favor by the Euro- 
pean nations. Colonization societies have continued 
to be formed, and funds have been collected with 
such alacrity that as a consequence the Jews have 
arrived in Jerusalem in such numbers that there 
would have been a famine awaiting the returning 
Hebrews, had not the cry of Judea for the Jews 
reached the land of the Czar, — the fatherland of 
everything oppressive, — and there sprang up among 
diplomats the fear of finding Palestine already occu- 
pied when the time should come to wrest it from the 
mummy nation which now holds it by sufferance 
only. Under this influence, the Turkish government 
issued a firman prohibiting the erection of houses for 
the Jews, followed the next year by an order denying 
the right of Jews to buy land ; they might sell, but 
every citizen in the Holy City should pledge them- 
selves not to yield an acre to the Hebrew. 

If cities are to be determined by the majority, 
Jerusalem is again a Jewish city. The firman enacted 
in 1 89 1 to prevent the Jews from emigrating to the 
Holy Land is not acknowledged by the English as 
referring to other than Russians, but they all know 
how to percolate through the boundaries of Palestine, 
in spite of law and firman. 

Among the Jews, there are many who interpret the 



SOME JEWISH COLONIES. 201 

prophecy to restore their sacred country, which is 
foretold by ten out of the sixteen inspired seers, as 
being fulfilled in the present day, however doubters 
and scorners exist, for this nation has ever inclined 
towards the worship of false prophets — and pelted 
their own. " Oh, Jerusalem, thou that stonest the 
prophets ! " 

The Jewish people in and about Jerusalem number 
about 40,ooo,nearly one-half of the entire population. 
Ten years ago, there were perhaps not more than 
1,200, — a number now doubled and trebled by the 
returning thousands to whom the country is a 
fatherland, including Lebanon down to the Jordan 
Valley, and bounded by the Arabian Desert and the 
Mediterranean Sea. 

Five distinct classes of Jews are to be met with, 
who, with the exception of the Yemens, have their 
own rabbis, treasurers, and tribunals. The Se- 
phardim are the most prominent in number, as 
they comprise the Mugrabin and Karaites Jews, 
who reject the Talmud, contenting themselves with 
the Old Testament. These claim to be the original 
Israelites driven out of Spain in 1497 by Ferdinand 
and Isabella. The second division of the Hebrews 
is the Ashkenazim, which includes Germans, Rus- 
sians, and Poles. The Polish Jews are again sub- 
divided into three religious sects, — Perushim, Chasi- 
dim, and Khabatiaks, — which do not differ in the 



202 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

essentials of religion, but disagree about different 
ceremonials and the obligatory character of rites. 

Besides the almshouses, the charity of Sir Moses 
Montefiore, several other bankers have built hospitals 
and numerous schools for girls and boys in the dis- 
trict towards the west, the garden of the country- 
side; here they teach Hebrew, Arabic, and French, 
besides a congenial trade, according to the different 
tastes of the scholars, which assists them in time to 
gain their own living. Only in the educational branch 
of philanthropy are the Jews slow and hesitating. 
The rabbis fear education, from a religious point 
of view, and the necessary finances are a serious 
problem to deal with ; but still they are not slow to 
perceive the numerous advantages which the exer- 
tions of other churches reap from the privilege 
accorded to all comers of education without price. 
Bishop Gobat has founded a school on Mount Zion ; 
houses of industry, with clean and properly fitted 
technical schools, are established by other Christian 
denominations ; and finally the Jews, aroused from 
their lethargy, exert themselves to compete with 
other races and lessen the influence of Christianity 
in Palestine. 

There are, in all, eighteen Jewish colonies now in 
Palestine, distributed in the different districts of Jaffa, 
Galilee, and Carmel ; and two others are projected in 
Gilead, where settlement lands have been already 



SOME JEWISH COLONIES. 203 

purchased. The original establishment, where the 
first bona-fide attempt was made to engraft the art 
of agriculture on the Hebrew, received the optimistic 
title of Mikweh Israel, at Jaffa, where, notwithstand- 
ing Turkish opposition and a natural unfitness for 
the work, the founder established an agricultural 
school with over sixty pupils, and had dominion over 
two thousand dunems of land. (Turkish land of any 
value is sold by the pick, or dunem ; four and one- 
half dunems make one acre.) 

This land is laid out in vineyards and orchards, 
and, above all, these colonists are willing to renounce 
the haluka, which is sent to Palestine by the Jewish 
people in other lands, and distributed to the Hebrews 
during the month of Moharram, — the sum varying 
according to circumstances from one to four pounds, 
which does not fail to effect sloth and indolence, the 
great cause of much of the failure of the colonies in 
Palestine. 

Among the colonies of the Jaffa district, that of 
Rishon le-Sion cultivates the black and white grapes 
on a large scale, producing an excellent claret, which 
has attracted attention in Egypt as well as Palestine. 
Even steam machinery is used for irrigating the land, 
and furnishes the water supply for domestic use, so 
the colonizing Hebrews are not behind in utilizing 
modern machinery in a way little dreamed of by the 
prophets who foretold their returning to " gladden 
the land." 



204 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

Nahalath Reuben, half an hour distant from Rishon, 
has solved the question of associating Jews and native 
fellahin in field labor. Laurence Oliphant, who 
has seen them, says : " It would be difficult to imagine 
anything more utterly incongruous than the spectacle 
thus presented, — the stalwart fellahin, with their 
wild shaggy locks, black beards, the brass hilts of 
their pistols projecting from their waistbands, their 
tasselled kufeihahs drawn lightly over their heads, 
and the ringleted, effeminate-looking Jews, in caftans 
reaching almost to their ankles, as oily as their red or 
sandy locks, or the expression of their countenances." 
After wretched difficulties about the division of the 
labor and the proceeds, the leopard and the kid lie 
down together, and have respect for a covenant agree- 
ment as to the profits of the oranges and vegetables 
in which the sons of Judea are established in seven- 
fold possession. 

Kastania and Gadara are the soft-sounding names 
of other colonies in this Jaffa district. In many 
cases the charitable machinery of Europe has been 
set in motion to aid settlers. The Hobbe ve Zion 
Association advances loans of money, to be repaid 
when the land becomes productive. In other cases, 
owners of the land employ Jewish labor for the field 
work, and send out stewards for the purpose of man- 
aging the colony; one estate is called the " Society 
for Menucha ve Nahalah (Rest and Possession)." 



SOME JEWISH COLONIES. 20$ 

The land purchased has been carefully selected, 
and is eminently fitted for colonization purposes. A 
mere footpath leads into Latroun, an hour's ride across 
the country. For several years the colonists have 
been living here in sheds, seriously annoyed by rov- 
ing Arabs, but are compensated by the perfumed air 
of orange and lemon groves, which would even make 
seductive the whitewashed stable of the poor manager 
if this primitive vicarage were only in the orange 
gardens of Jaffa. 

Other colonies are the sole possession of Baron 
Rothschild, who, by a stroke of genius, has found the 
culture of the grapes so congenial to his poorer 
brethren that he employs Jewish laborers at one franc, 
fifty centimes per day, until they become in a short 
time self-supporting. Various experiments have been 
tried, such as flower-raising for perfumery, and fruits 
for market, but without good results. The land is 
unprofitable when asked to produce cereals. The 
grain garnered in Palestine is a mere flash in the pan 
compared to the harvest garnered with little effort in 
the rich Nile Valley ; so grapes for wine, and mul- 
berry-trees for silk worms, and, in some places, soft- 
shell almonds, are the abounding products of Palestine 
that pay to export to a foreign market. It does not 
seem difficult to shake up energy and agriculture in 
the dwellers of certain independent Jewish settlements. 
Thrift lies in the germ of their natures, and at the 



206 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

Rothschild settlements the colonists are in such a 
prosperous condition that no Arabs are employed, 
neither do they receive any outside support ; in fact, 
the Rothschild colonies are worked exclusively by 
Jewish labor, with the sole exception of skilled me- 
chanics, who are given temporary work at carpentry. 
Families receive a monthly cash allowance, — some- 
where about eight francs a month for each man, 
woman, or child of the original colonists ; to the late 
comers, something less is conceded. 

At the Baron's expense, rent free, the Jews occupy 
large dwellings built of stone, somewhat barrack-like, 
but comfortable, — a veritable paradise to the poor 
hunted Jew, arriving destitute and forsaken, who is 
provided, at the cost of little personal effort, with 
shelter and plenty of food. 

With all these natural advantages for the return- 
ing Jews, it is not to be expected that an Israelite 
will place himself in a Christian colony, unless there 
is something to be gained by doing so. 

Eighteen miles south of the Holy City, on good 
arable land, through which runs the Jaffa and Jeru- 
salem Railroad, is Artuf, — an estate of some twelve 
hundred acres, managed and owned by the Jewish 
Refugees' Society of London. After enormous 
trouble and expense, this land was peaceably occu- 
pied by blocks of houses, not yet plastered or ten- 
anted except by the scorpions in the walls, but 



SOME JEWISH COLONIES. 20? 

nearly ready for a colony to materialize. The colo- 
nist, attracted by the new scheme of a twenty-one 
years' land purchase, having signed a contract for 
one of the houses and a small piece of land, finds 
the advantage of this system to consist in being 
able to possess his ancestral land after a term of 
years, having been supplied in the mean time by 
the Society with implements, animals to work, and 
substantial food. 

" Yawash " — slowly — is a good motto for hasty 
decision regarding the future of Jewish emigration 
to the Holy Land. Palestine is quite unequal to 
the support of ten million Israelites, is the comment 
of the Europeans ; nevertheless the Promised Land 
includes an acreage equal to England, Wales, Ire- 
land, Belgium, and Holland, and these countries 
support 50,000,000 inhabitants. 

The natural resources of the fair country which 
Sir Percivale in his Holy Quest calls the blessed land 
of Aromat, may be recorded faithfully as unbounded ; 
every climate is represented, from the Alp land of 
Lebanon to the tropical Jordan Valley with its stores 
of beautiful fruits and creeping greenery. It is the 
country of countries for oranges. The few square 
miles planted around Jaffa bear the largest and best 
fruit in the world, and bring the highest prices. 
Never was there such a success as came to that 
little spot under cultivation, where the value of the 



208 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

oranges shipped to Egypt and Turkey alone amounted 
in 1 88 1 to £60,000, and the amount sent abroad has 
doubled and trebled in the last years ; some one has 
estimated that, taking the seaboard as one hundred 
and fifty miles long and only five miles wide, and 
supposing this piece of land to be planted with oranges 
only, the profit derived from this one article would 
amount to the astonishing sum of $9,000,000 per an- 
num. Grapes also grow with the least possible care, 
and so luxuriant is the annual yield that farmers allow 
the luscious fruit to decay, because it would be of no 
pecuniary advantage to take it to market. 

All the country is fertile, besides being well sup- 
plied with minerals, while the railroad makes its riches 
accessible to all the world; and one can trust the 
shrewd Jew to know how to take advantage both of 
his rare opportunities and the fact that his fatherland 
lies midway between the inexhaustible treasures of 
the East and the great wealth of the Western 
countries. 



THE BOX COLONY. 

ONE of our last days in Jerusalem I took advan- 
tage of the beautiful weather to make an 
expedition I long had contemplated. It was to see 
with my own eyes the little red-roofed colonies, 
spotted over the grassy ridges towards Gareb. The 
excursion was presided over by a Syrian, or rather 
a Samaritan, half of whose daylight hours are spent 
in the saddle of an astute young donkey, who treads 
in his own footsteps among the unfrequented villages 
of the refugees. It is growing warm, and the road 
northward through the Russian settlement is dry 
and dusty ; the white convent walls shut out the 
scenery, and leave nothing to be said in favor of 
the slow mode of travelling on donkey-back, for the 
present Syrian beasts do not possess the desirable 
characteristics of Mohammed's ass, called El Burak, 
" the lightning." " Sir Balaam " in Palestine is not 
only deaf to music, but also to blows. There are 
strong reasons for believing, however, that a secret 
understanding exists between the donkey and his 
little master, who is never caught in the act of being 
stupid, and a backsheesh always develops an unac- 

14 



2IO IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

countable alacrity on both sides. Soon the view 
opens on a lovely fresh landscape, showing the great 
green undulating downs, sweet with clover and wild 
flowers. The first instalment of cottages on the 
road lying in the sunshine about us is called Meash- 
rim, meaning an hundred doors ; now it numbers a 
thousand. It was built by rich Polish Jews, and is 
situated about ten minutes' walk from the Jaffa Gate. 

A low one-story stone building is occupied by the 
refugees on the instalment system, those who pay 
the full amount in time becoming the owners. There 
seems to be barrack room for half a regiment in this 
soldierly looking dwelling. Evidently comfort was 
the last thing thought of in this establishment, and 
that it is not a failure is due to the energy, persever- 
ance, and pluck displayed by the colonists in face 
of provoking obstacles placed in their way by 
Turkish authority. 

There does not appear to be the great joy and 
gladness on the countenances of this " returning 
remnant " spoken of by the prophets ; still this little 
spot represents the only shelter and safety in the 
whole country to a hunted nation. 

Farther on, Niveh Sedet, a cheerless little colony, 
is called ironically the " Pleasant Land of Beulah." I 
fear it is only a figure of speech, when the tropical 
summer sun shines on the treeless surroundings, and 
the hot air broods over everything, drying up the 



THE BOX COLONY. 211 

thirsty roots and leaves of the unshaded earth about 
them. 

At the end of half an hour I can see from my 
saddle, perched on a hill-slope, the curious little 
houses of Shepet-Tsedek, nicknamed the " Box 
Colony." No road leads into it; the meadows are 
unseamed and unscarred by wagon wheels or the 
winding tracks of donkeys. 

This glittering village is built of petroleum boxes, 
flattened out and nailed on a slight wooden frame ; 
roof and side walls, chimneys and casements, are con- 
structed entirely of glazed tin, and one can easily 
imagine the crackling which must result in a hail- 
storm. The wooden doors were provided by the Lon- 
don Jews' Society, to which my companion belongs, 
and to which these Yemen Jews owe everything. 
These Jews originally lived in Aleppo, where they 
were well off; and when asked why they emigrated, 
they answer, " We would rather suffer here than 
be prosperous in our own country; it is because 
we love Jerusalem." 

The only street in the colony is filled in with 
various rough pointed stones ; even a donkey has 
great difficulty in picking his way over them with- 
out a stumble as he wades into the liquid mud 
half concealing the various holes and ditches. At 
right angles to this street are narrow intersecting 
lanes, bordered with the bright tin box houses 



212 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

about ten feet high and a dozen in width, floored 
with mother earth and without windows ; the side 
walls, lined next to the rusty tin with stones, are 
kept in place by occasional strips of lath. 

In one of the gas-box houses, fifteen Jews are 
living, one and a half square yard to each person. 
The family of four generations came here, it is 
said, without the authority of the Pasha, and were 
peremptorily turned out. One of our donkeys looked 
in at the open door and effectually filled up the 
aperture of a house, where fifteen grown persons 
live their lives, like bees in a hive. Piled up at 
one end of this room, is a heap of stones cov- 
ered with rough boards, making a sort of platform, 
which is the "upper chamber" of the house, and 
the most popular idea of a bed consists of a heap 
of rags with a skin to throw over one when it rains ; 
while in a dark corner, hardly visible in the dark 
space left for it, a baby swings contentedly in a 
coarse hempen bag. In the remaining six feet of 
flooring, a woman stoops over a clay oven about 
a foot in height, containing a few charcoals, over 
which a saucepan rests on a strip of tin, simmer- 
ing the coarse ground maize, mixed with a little 
wheat flour, which is the staple of life in the 
" Box Colony." I stood watching this rude and 
simple process for some time without disturbing 
the operation ; but when my companion came up, 



THE BOX COLONY. 213 

the cooks left their fire, the mothers their babies, and 
the loafing ones their dreams. It was well worth 
coming down here just to see it; the sick ones 
crowded around for medicines, and the helpless 
ones for alms, with a touching devotion. A king 
would rarely obtain such real love from his subjects, 
although they might show it in a more civilized 
way, and wear gold lace and tinsel ; while these 
are clad in clothes to which cast-off is the only 
word applicable, — a procedure about to be acted 
upon by the clothes themselves. 

It is all so queer, such an example of strange 
upside-down fashion of colonizing, that justice can- 
not be done it in description. It gives one a terri- 
bly real idea of the chronic state of famishment 
in the little town, where no gardens or markets, 
or even shops, are to be seen. The men labor in 
" Abraham's Vineyard," I am told, work being 
provided for them by the C. M. S. Society of 
London; however, I fancy the colony is taken 
care of collectively as well as individually by the 
same Society. 

Four piastres per day is the usual wage, amount- 
ing in some cases to ten piastres for skilled labor- 
ers, who work eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours 
a day in the summer-time. A wire stretched on 
tall poles, representing the city wall, completely 
surrounds the colony. It looks like some ghost 



214 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

of a telegraph service. Beyond this line, no son 
of Abraham is permitted by Jewish law even to 
carry a handkerchief in his pocket on the Sabbath 
Day, — a law which is elastic enough, however, to 
allow the article to be wrapped about the head. 
No Jew is allowed to open a letter, as that would 
break the paper; however, he may read it, if an- 
other person destroys the seal. Beyond this im- 
aginary wall, the law forbids tying or untying a 
knot, or even carrying a stick. . 

An ascetic rabbi with a " turtle-dove" beard, 
as the Orientals would call it, and two oily curls 
plastered over each ear, who unfortunately inclines 
to a wretched mixture of civilized and Eastern dress, 
attends to the observance of ceremonials, enact- 
ments, and dietary laws. 

We found him seated on the only straw mat 
in the colony, in a little zinc synagogue ten or 
twelve feet square, which is attached to the earth 
as mysteriously as Mohammed's carpet, for no one 
knows what keeps it from blowing away in a gale 
of wind. The most primitive altar of unpainted 
boards, holding two bright tin match-boxes as 
alms basins, is placed in the eastern end of the 
building, facing the Temple at Jerusalem, as Solo- 
mon directed ; and the only churchly vessels are 
a couple of silver spice-boxes attached to a framed 
Hebrew manuscript title to the building, placed 



THE BOX COLONY. 21 5 

above the Holy of Holies. Here and there are 
precious relics, to be looked at from a distance 
and admired with respectful gravity ; while a feature 
of more than ordinary interest is the Passion Service, 
on the concluding portion of which the old Eng- 
lish nursery tale of the " House that Jack Built " is 
founded. 

Squatting on the floor of the synagogue, which 
is also a school, is the teacher, sewing clumsily 
on a white shirt, and at the same time urging on 
seven little Israelites from six to eight years of 
age, who are seated around a huge volume chanting 
Leviticus in Hebrew, wofully out of time and tune. 

The Yemens have no books ; the only copy of 
the Old Testament has been written by hand, and 
the boys have learned, from sitting one at each 
side of the manuscript, to read it equally well, no 
matter which way it is turned, — one upside down, 
another sideways, and the others in its normal 
position. 

The old Rabbi was on his feet the moment he 
saw us, every wrinkle expressing joy, pressing our 
hands first to his lips, and then his forehead. The 
Jews have imbibed some of the Oriental expres- 
sions of hospitality ; in very flowery metaphors, we 
were pressed to enter and partake of sticky little 
lumps of sugar, which clung to our fingers like 
myriads of burrs. The poor Jew seemed intelli- 



216 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

gent, and, like the Yemens, was open-faced and 
unassuming, and, besides, had a decidedly self- 
respecting appearance, quite above his poverty. 
In an adjoining house was the Rabbi's home, 
without a sign of homelikeness about it ; his wife, 
a lovely Jewess, looked up from the debris of boxes 
and vegetable remains strewed over the dirt floor, 
and talked rapidly to the Rector, who afterwards 
told me that a child of the .eldest son had died, 
and, according to Jewish law, the relatives must 
mourn seven days, during which time no work or 
even baking is allowed, and having nothing ahead, 
they must be helped or starve. 

The maintenance of this colony has been a 
perpetual drain on the London Society, and the 
supporters of it deserve great credit. I hope it 
may occur to some one to help them in this work. 

On the Bethelehem Road, three colonies have 
sprung up in fourteen years, and are growing 
gradually; another, the Damascus settlement, exists 
on all sorts of work. A few among the more in- 
dustrious colonists have a little money, but they 
are never too well off to have a house given 
them. 

At Mahadet-je-Judah, the Hebrews are provided 
for by subscriptions among their co-religionists in 
prosperous lands, having a substantial-looking set- 
tlement near the Jaffa Gate, where the splendid 



THE BOX COLONY. 217 

grapes grow so easily and luxuriantly. The Jews 
delight in fruit cultivation, which is much more 
congenial to their tastes than agriculture, and they 
manage so it is a pleasure as well as a profit to 
win piastres from the willing soil. A watch-tower 
(merely an enclosure of rough stones) stands now, 
as of old, in every vineyard ; and when the grapes 
begin to ripen, the entire family go forth to occupy 
it, each taking his turn during the clear nights at 
the post of observation, for signs of thieving foxes, 
robbers, and perhaps the marauding specimens of 
their own race. 

In and among the hills surrounding Jerusalem, 
there are nearly one thousand Jews coming there 
from the degenerate slums and filthy hovels of 
Europe ; still in great poverty, if not absolute want, 
a strange and characteristic trait accompanying all 
alike. You rarely, if ever, meet one of the in- 
habitants of these colonies begging for backsheesh ; 
and of the seven thousand mendicants in Jerusalem 
who molest one at the gates, amid the clamorous 
grunts for alms, I have never seen the corkscrew 
curls of any Jewish beggar. 

Each hilly slope has its group of tiled houses, nes- 
tling on its old historic sides; most modern-looking 
sides they are now, and very civilized indeed is the 
English cottage at Goath, which comes in view as 
we canter up the neat roadway leading through 



2l8 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

lovely patches of meadows reddened with the scar- 
let anemone, — the lily of the field in the Song of 
Songs, — and we are well content to drop the reins 
on the donkey's neck, and gaze on the rich blue 
of distant Mizpeh. This is Goath, — the last colony 
we shall reach this morning, but not the least inter- 
esting. The estate belongs to the London Society 
for Persecuted Jews, and is superintended by two 
trained missionaries, who are good amateur archae- 
ologists in the bargain ; three hundred fruit-trees and 
three thousand vines are cultivated by fifty-six He- 
brews, who labor, besides, in making smooth the 
stony places in the neighborhood for future Jewish 
colonists. A part of this process consists in blast- 
ing away the rosy lime rocks which peep out from 
the hillside. At a little distance from us the match 
is applied to a fuse ; a sudden flash, and the explod- 
ing gunpowder tears away the soft stone, disclosing 
a rare scorpion in the smoking centre, who was soon 
impaled upon a wine cork in a glass case. 

Close behind the cottage, the dwelling, and also 
the superintendent's workshop, is found a precious 
discovery of Roman occupation, called, from the 
rich decorations of the mosaic pavements, " the 
King's wine-press." Here, too, an excavated colum- 
barium, looking for all the world like an inverted 
bee-hive, serves for a ready-made tool-house, the 
empty cells making excellent receptacles. It is to 



THE BOX COLONY. 219 

be hoped the former patrician occupants of these 
diverted sepulchres did not have the same objec- 
tion to the removal of their ashes as Shakespeare, 
otherwise the curse might well be connected with 
the poisonous scorpion lying so menacingly in 
this morning's blast. 

I cannot refrain from mentioning the absorbing 
interest attached to this place in the minds of my 
friendly companions, and which afterwards cast a 
spell over me by its eerie reality. A hundred 
generations ago, came the word of Jeremiah the 
prophet, foretelling that, in days yet to come, 
Jerusalem should be rebuilt for the last time and 
forever, and " the city shall be built from the tower 
of Hananeel unto the gate of the corner. And the 
measuring line shall yet go forth over against it 
upon the hill Gareb, and shall compass about 
Goath." Now this is just what has happened : the 
building reaches straight out to the place where 
I am standing, there it stops, and the red-roofed 
houses follow a line down to the dry Kidron and 
the Valley of Dead Bodies, as predicted. The ashes 
of the old sacrifices were commanded to be buried 
in a clean place, and the amount consumed by 
the Temple offerings would in time have been 
great enough to form the hill; indeed, a sample 
has been analyzed, and found to be the ashes of 
animals. Only a few years ago, the remains of a 



220 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

tower were discovered near the Jaffa Gate which was 
identified as the one Hananel built in the field of 
Anathoth, for which seventeen shekels of silver 
were weighed out in the balances, and for which, 
to-day, 4,000 must be handed out in the rather 
more convenient form of Bank of England notes. 
I felt as if the weary and forlorn Israelites might 
be granted some of the prophetic promises, instead 
of the curses which we are rather apt to look upon 
as their due. 

This elaborate system of proselytism is naturally 
costly; but the results show a grateful perception 
on the part of the converts, of the benefits of the 
combined effects of civilization and Christianity, 
for while the work provided to destitute Jews in 
Abraham's vineyard and the financial aid given 
them in other directions is designed, first of all, 
to advance their material prosperity, the hope 
always is present that this pure, true love and 
unselfishness will bear testimony to the sweet char- 
ities of a Christian life, and the shrewd Jew will 
contrast the squalid condition of his surroundings 
and his beliefs with that of his Gentile brethren, 
to the latter's advantage. 

The estate we are leaving is designed to serve in 
time for a hundred Hebrew houses, but while funds 
are being collected, the Jews themselves do more than 
stand and wait. They are laborers in the field, 



THE BOX COLONY. 221 

the dressers of the vines, make the real olive soap 
sent to Marseilles ; and it is only at the Wailing- 
Place on Fridays that their mild and gentle faces 
change to an expression, half rapture, half scowl, 
while their woes of the kind that are not voice- 
less reach the curious visitor who ventures to 
ask for one of the nails driven in the Temple wall 
to register a vow. A silver piastre will purchase 
the rusty bit of iron, and keep them quiet for five 
minutes. 

This languid land of Goath has very few visitors, 
and the real practical hard work of the missionaries, 
who are guardians, helpers, and priests of the sons 
of Abraham, receives little praise ; but it is all the 
more interesting for being so rarely seen, and very 
regretfully we climb in the saddle again, for it is 
difficult to believe it can hold together in the wild 
scamper insisted on by the donkeys, once their 
noses are pointed homewards. How wonderfully 
picturesque and beautiful is this returning ! The 
wild-flowers at our feet are a month's study, and 
so are the endless views of Mizpeh and Moab, and 
the face of Olivet, with the towers of a hundred 
convents glinting in the sunshine. It is too grand 
to describe by fragments, more beautiful to my 
mind than anything I have ever seen. Soon shines 
out, above the roof-tops, the wonderful blue-tiled 
minutiae which constitute the dome of the Harem 



222 IN CAIRO AND JERUSALEM. 

Esh-Shereef, — the noble Mohammedan sanctuary, 
built on the sacred temple site, where the ancient 
chroniclers relate that the Jewish Solomon with out- 
spread hands uttered his prophetic litany : " For 
the strangers who are not of Thy people Israel," but, 
like ourselves, " come out of a far country." 



A GIRL'S WINTER IN INDIA. 

By MARY THORNE CARPENTER. 

12 Full-page illustrations. i2mo, ornamental cloth. $1.50. 



A GRAPHIC book by an American girl who spent last winter in India and 
Ceylon, and had the entree to the Viceroy's entertainments and the Indian 
Zenanas. Her descriptions of the country and objects of unusual interest, as well 
as of life and character, cover a rather unusual range of observation, preceded by 
a record of a three weeks' voyage on a P. and O. steamer, with a donkey ride at 
Port Said, and an exceptional experience on the camels at Aden. 

Three weeks were spent on the Island of Ceylon, and included a trip to the 
Kandian Mountains, the pleasure retreat of the English officials. Thence to Bom- 
bay, and on to Allahabad, with an Indian servant, whose original qualities were 
alike striking and ingenious. There is a vivid description of the Hindu Melah 
festivals on the banks of the Junna River, and of hundreds of holy Fakirs gathered 
there, with an account of the medical missions and the Christian schools. At 
Calcutta she saw the intense Oriental atmosphere heightened by the visit of the 
Russian Czarovitch, and at the grand ball, the high water-mark of Eastern mag- 
nificence, when the Rajahs and Indian princes appeared in the native costumes, 
bedecked with brilliant jewels. 

In the descriptive bits of real life at Delhi, there is a characterization of mer- 
cantile life, and the peculiar methods of the native trading with foreigners. The 
wonderful ruins, the matchless Jumna Musjid, the imperial palaces, carved lace- 
work screens, the marble mosques, etc., all are portrayed in graphic terms. 
From Delhi, an excursion was made to the Kootub, — a unique monument of 
fluted sandstone of Arabic design. 

Jeypore was a marked contrast to all previous sights. Here is a pink and 
white city. Elephants, caparisoned as in the Arabian Nights, tread softly in the 
streets ; there are peculiar street scenes and customs, and the atmosphere is that 
of an intensified East. The traveller took an elephant ride to Amber and the 
deserted palace of the Rajputs. The mountain roadways were lined with white 
mosques, and shrines overgrown with dense creepers, through which darted wild 
peacocks and chattering monkeys. 



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182 FIFTH AVENUE. 

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UNKNOWN SWITZERLAND. 

BY VICTOR TISSOT. 

Translated from the Twelfth French Edition by Mrs. Wilson. 

Large-paper copy, with nineteen photograph illustrations. Bound 
in white and crimson cloth, gilt top, Italian style, $4.50. 
Tourist Edition, without illustration, $1.25. 



M. Tissot moves amid the grandeurs and beauties of Switzerland 
with the easy step of an accomplished pedestrian, the trained eye and 
hand of an artist, the soul of a poet, and the imagination, the sentiment, 
the susceptibility of a Frenchman. Like the ponderous but delicately 
adjusted trip-hammer, which can forge a steamship shaft or crack a 
walnut, he is equally effective in describing a mountain monarch or a 
pasture flower. His love of the sublime and beautiful is always a passion, 
and sometimes bursts into ecstasy. . • • Gautier has written of the Alps, 
but M. Tissot is not unworthy to be read after the great French master. 
Taine is a matchless critic of life and thought, and the spirit of Taine 
here broods over the mighty ranges and broad expanses of Switzerland. 
... It is a fascinating book. — Literary World. 

One need not wish for a more entertaining guide than this witty, 
chatty Frenchman, who alternates effective passages of description with 
scraps of history, local legends, and humorous sketches of the people he 
sees around him. — Scottish Leader. 

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

In large-paper copy only. 

Lucerne. On the Languard. 

Town Hall at Basle. Leaning over the Abyss. 

Lucerne. A Crevasse in the Glacier. 

A Group of Girls. The Glacier of Roseg. 

Chiavenna. The Top of the Pass. 

Maloja. Andermatt. 

Sils-Maria. Zermatt. 

Silvaplana. Belles of the Town. 

St. Moritz. The Rhone Valley, 
pontresina. 



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182 FIFTH AVENUE. 

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Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey. 

By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D. D. 

Late Dean of Westminster and formerly Canon of Canterbury. 

Thirteen full-page photogravure illustrations after Railton's etch- 
ings, and numerous smaller illustrations. 2 vols., 8vo. In 
ornamental cloth, Italian style, $7.50 ; half calf, gilt top, $12.50. 
Cheap edition, two volumes, cloth, $3.00. 



'"FHERE used to be met daily in Westminster Abbey an unassuming 
*■ elderly gentleman, with little to distinguish him to the common 
observer from a number of the more attentive and quiet observers, ex- 
cept the peculiar spirituality of his face. He would wander apart from 
the groups scattered before the monuments, as if in thoughtful reflection, 
or passing near them and attracted by some words let fall, would volun- 
teer some new and pleasing information about the place. It was Arthur 
Penrhyn Stanley, the dean of Westminster, himself, cherishing and 
studying the one spot of English ground that above all others was his 
pride and his love. Every Englishman holds Westminster most prec- 
ious as the seat of the coronations and the sepulchre of his kings, and 
as the resting-place of famous Englishmen of every rank and creed, and 
every form of mind and genius ; but Dean Stanley, while venerating it as 
deeply as any one in these regards, felt its influence and reverenced it 
most because there, " if anywhere, the Christian worship of England 
may labor to meet both the strength and the weakness of succeeding 
ages, to inspire new meaning into ancient forms, and embrace within 
itself each rising aspiration after all greatness, human and Divine." 

But it was Stanley's expression of the best sentiment and feeling of all 
Englishmen who have revered the Abbey that made him its most quali- 
fied and best historian, and gave to his work, " Historical Memorials of 
Westminster Abbey," its unique and great importance. They are books 
covering a large field and wrought out by the most patient research, in 
the midst of engrossing duties, in the archives and among the writings 
of former explorers, and requiring new and difficult rearrangement of 
historical data ; but they are thorough and complete and learned and 
entertaining beyond comparison. It is a history of all the parts of the 
Abbey and a connection of their history with the general history of 
England. 



New York: ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & 00. (Incorporated), 

182 FIFTH AVENUE. 

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HISTORICAL MEMORIALS OF CANTERBURY. 

By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D. D. 

Late Dean of Westminster, formerly Canon of Canterbury. 



new illustrated edition, uniform in size and binding with 
" Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey." Six full- 
page etchings, and thirteen full-page photographs of the 
Cathedral and interior. i vol., cloth, Italian style, $6.50; 
half calf, $9.00. Cheap edition, cloth, $1.50. 



jVJ O books of a historical character in the English language are more 
attractive than those which bear the name of the late Dean Stanley- 
The gracious and winning spirit of the man seems to diffuse itself 
through all that he wrote ; and even when dealing with purely historical 
questions, this strong and fascinating personal element is never missing. 
Dean Stanley had not only a very charming style, of itself a rare and 
beautiful gift, but he possessed the historical imagination. He did not 
conceive of a distant event or a remote character as a mere historical 
thing or personage. Whatever presented itself to him as a fact was 
instantly clothed in the hues of life. It is this vivifying quality which 
gives his work such an irresistible charm. Among the most delightful 
of his books are those which relate to the great English cathedrals, 
Westminster and Canterbury. His " Historical Memorials of Canter- 
bury," like its companion work, brings us into contact with some of the 
most commanding characters and some of the most significant events 
and picturesque episodes in English history. Its character and its 
interest are too well known to need further comment here. This octavo 
volume, with its spacious margins, its beautiful type, its elegant binding, 
and its illustrations, is a piece of book-making worthy of the highest 
praise. — Christian Union. 



New York: ANSON D. P. KANDOLPH & 00. (Incorporated), 

182 FIFTH AVENUE. 
Sent post-paid on receipt of price. 



